Tuesday, April 27, 2010

THE SPYMASTER OF MONTE CARLO 29: DUVALIER HUMANITARIANISM



At seven in the morning on July 10th (2005) a massive storm settled over Monaco dispensing violent bolts of lightning accompanied by ferocious thunder-a message from Prince Rainier?

The storm cleared by 11:15 when Prince Albert arrived at M-Base for a meeting with his spymaster, Robert Eringer.

The Prince had made his final decision: Franck Biancheri would not be appointed chef de cabinet. Instead, he had under consideration Jean-Luc Allavena, a Monegasque residing in Paris. The Prince scribbled this name on a notepad and tasked Eringer with vetting him. He also requested Eringer continue investigating Biancheri with a view to removing him as finance minister.

Eringer then briefed the Prince on Jean-Paul Carteron, an investigation the Prince had specially requested:

As a young man with a law degree from the University of Paris, Carteron tried to break into French politics but could not find support and lost several elections. Perhaps disillusioned with the system, he left France in 1981 and went to work as a lawyer for Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier of Haiti and wound up looking after Papa Doc's huge financial fortune.

When Papa Doc died, Carteron carried on with Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, for whom he facilitated real estate deals along the Cote d'Azur and in Monaco. The Duvalier regime was brutal, murderous and corrupt--and the beginning of Carteron's own financial base.

As Haiti's ambassador to the UN in 1985, Carteron took the opportunity to forge strong links with Eastern European countries, and utilized those contacts as the basis for creating the Crans Montana Forum in Switzerland in 1989. (Carteron was a Swiss national on the basis of his first marriage to a Swiss national, Patricia Luyet.)

Only after bloodying his hands with the Duvaliers and enriching himself did Carteron portray himself as "humanitarian." And his forum endeavored to provide respectability for brutal, corrupt regimes in Africa, from which Carteron personally profited. One notable example is Congolese President Sassou N'Guesso's six hundred thousand Swiss-franc "contribution" to the forum.

By 1996, the Swiss became disenchanted with Carteron and requested he move his forum elsewhere. They suspected him of money laundering, and his forum gave them logistical headaches due to its dubious participants, many of which had to be kept under surveillance while in country.

His forum thus displaced from Switzerland, Carteron chose Monaco as a new base and received permission from Prince Rainier to create a Monaco S.A.M. and stage his forum inside the principality. Carteron began to call his private entity the Monaco World Summit. Leaders of other countries invited to participate for a fee were given the impression, because of its name, that the summit was an official Monaco event or at least sponsored by Monaco, which it was not.

Once he institutionalized his summit in Monaco, Carteron began to establish himself as a professional middleman. His specialty: Brokering honorary consulships to Monaco from Eastern European and Balkan countries. His standard rate to get someone named as honorary consul to Monaco: Fifty thousand euros.

In one case he was said to have requested and received an expensive Breguet wristwatch.

The Prince fumed that if Prince Rainier had known any of this, he never would have allowed the summit to function in Monaco-and pondered aloud about inviting Carteron to move his forum elsewhere.

In fact, SIGER, the police intelligence unit of Monaco's police department, had actually penned a negative report about Carteron after he first applied for permission to establish his forum in the principality, but once it reached the interior ministry it disappeared down a black hole.

Eringer suggested that because the forum brought business to Monaco and was therefore good for the economy, it should be allowed to continue, but only on the basis that Carteron remove the word Monaco from its name, so that Carteron's private forum would not so easily be confused with official state sponsorship. (This was eventually done.)

Inexplicably, just over a year later the Prince appointed Carteron to be one of two fundraisers for an entity called Peace Through Sport.

The second fundraiser? Adnan Houdrouge, known to boast around Monaco's drinking establishments that he had the Prince "by the balls" for supposedly paying him a bribe of three million euros for permission to invest in Monaco's football team.

When next they spoke, Eringer reported to the Prince on Jean-Luc Allavena. "He is very smart and very clean-an excellent choice for chef de cabinet." The only problem, Eringer added, would be luring Allavena "home" to Monaco from Paris, to which he had moved at age eighteen. His four daughters attended school in Paris and he had a great job running a large media conglomerate.

The Prince seemed determined to try.


Ask Eringer questions anonymously at:

http://www.formspring.me/Eringer


Coming Next: Summer of Sloth