In mid-January (2007), the Prince's spymaster, Robert Eringer, monitored an extraordinary summit in the village of San Casciano, near Florence in Italy.

Villa Mangiacane had been the Machiavelli seat, to which the father of political science, Niccolo Machiavelli, had been banished by the autocratic Medicis, and where, for fourteen years, Niccolo wrote his discourses-including an enduring master thesis entitled The Prince.

Under the ownership of Glynn Cohen (a Monaco resident from Zimbabwe) and his secret co-owner Gocha Arivadze (a way for Arivadze to launder money), Villa Mangiacane had become a decadent getaway for Arivadze and friends of the Prince.

Decorated in erotica, this getaway was where Arivadze and the fellers would bring models and prostitutes for boozy weekend parties lubricated by house wine from the so-named Arivadze Cellar. During this particular week, however, Arivadze played host to a dozen Russians from the energy sector and senior members of Russian intelligence.

Even more fascinating, Arivadze hosted them in the Prince's name, telling those assembled that the brand new 2007 Rolls Royce parked outside with Monaco plates T245 belonged to the Prince, on loan to him, specifically for this meeting.

Arivadze, Eringer believed, was Moscow's lightning rod in Monaco, using his influence with the Prince--via aide-de-camp Bruno Philipponnat and close friends Robert Munsch and Michael McNamara--to pave the way for massive Russian money laundering into real estate in the principality. He and his fellow Russians used prostitutes and the prospects of lucrative moneymaking deals to lure the Prince's friends to Moscow, compromise them, and turn them into members or fellow travelers of their team.

Eringer traced ownership of the Rolls Royce not to the Prince, but to Francesco Bongiovanni, a friend of the Prince. Eringer believed Arivadze secretly owned the car--as he did the villa--but put property in the names of others to shield his ownership for tax reasons.

Arivadze had also apparently received an award at the Kremlin from President Vladimir Putin, an occasion said to have been attended by Philipponnat, Munsch and McNamara.

Eringer speculated that Arivadze was honored by Putin for his access to (and influence with) the Prince, mostly through Philipponnat, who exclusively handled Russian business on behalf of the Palace through General Vladimir Pronichev, Commander of the Federal Border Guards, who had overseen Russia's cooperation during Prince Albert's North Pole expedition. And also for choreographing the Russian "gift" of a dacha, built from scratch by Russian laborers on the Prince's country estate, Roc Agel, commencing soon after the Prince's return from meeting Putin in Moscow--a project that cemented Philipponnat's relationship with General Pronichev and the Russians.

On another front, the in-house accountant from ASM, Monaco's football team, was brought to M-Base because he did not know where else to turn. He provided Eringer with documents that detailed financial irregularities and suspicious payments, including payments to Swiss accounts, which were illegal.

It was also illegal for Gerard Brianti to commingle funds from ASM with Ageprim, his own company, yet these documents confirmed this is what Brianti had done and continued to do.

The accountant told Eringer he had already made the Prince personally aware of the illegality of these transactions. He could not understand why the Prince, with such documentary evidence, had taken no action.


The Prince had tasked Eringer with investigating Sergei Pugachev, the Nice-based Russian who had bought a nightclub for his Monaco-resident sons, and who wanted SBM to manage his new hotel in Moscow. According to one of his sons, Pugachev was laundering money for President Putin along the Cote d'Azur, and perhaps was doing so under duress, because Pugachev apparently harbored concerns about how his relationship with Putin would evolve into the future.

So as a pre-condition to signing the SBM deal, after SBM's board agreed to proceed, Pugachev demanded a private meeting with the Prince.

Eringer advised the Prince to snub Pugachev and pull the plug on this deal.

It would be cheesy, Eringer pointed out, that the very first time SBM ventured outside of Monaco to manage a hotel, it did so in Russia, whose president had just ordered the murder of a UK citizen and, in the process, had subjected parts of London to radiation poisoning.

And it was just as well, since the reason Pugachev wanted to see the Prince was to request Monegasque nationality as part of the deal, for which he was also willing to pay millions of euros in support of projects in Monaco.

Based on Eringer's recommendation, the Prince pulled the plug on Pugachev.

Patric Maugein, who had been privy to the corrupt entanglements between Jacques Chirac and Saddam Hussein, died in Paris, to which he had returned when things turned ugly for him in Kazakhstan. Maugein was only fifty years old. Official cause of death: cancer. The timing of Maugein's death was certainly convenient for Chirac, who would soon step down as president and no longer enjoy immunity from prosecution for corruption.

Paris was Eringer's next stop, along with Jean-Leonard de Massy, to meet the DST director.

Mr. Director eyed de Massy up and down before asking Eringer with a fixed stare, "How are your CIA friends?"

During the spymaster's previous two visits, CIA had not been mentioned. Somebody--probably Monaco police chief Andre Muhlberger, a one-time DST officer--had been winding him up. Or the recent influx of foreign intelligence officers from half-a-dozen countries visiting Eringer in Monaco had him, well, spooked.

"Fine," Eringer replied, abiding the third party rule, which precluded him from saying any more than that. "Like any other relationship. We now have many more liaison relationships."

Mr. Director seemed surprised that the MIS guys were so buoyant. Almost as if Muhlberger had assured him he would see Eringer gone.

The director's chief of staff, piped up: "I have a question: What will Andre Muhlberger do and what will you do?"

It was a fatuous question from someone who was supposed to know the intelligence business: Muhlberger would do law enforcement and Eringer would do intelligence. Yes, Eringer had been asked by the Prince to undertake investigations that belonged within the domain of law enforcement, Eringer explained, but that was because the police force had been a leaky ship and distrusted by the Prince. Now, with Muhlberger in command, Eringer had relinquished criminal investigations to him.

"Are you going to retire?" Mr. Director asked Eringer while fixing his eyes on de Massy.

"I created this entity," Eringer replied. "I want to assure it is firmly established and in good hands before I go."

"Will you ever institutionalize?" asked the chief of staff.

"For now the Prince prefers we keep a low profile," replied Eringer. "We became too visible, by necessity, and made some enemies."

"Then you are doing your job," said the chief of staff.

"Indeed. Now we plan to take a back step, and become less visible again."

After Eringer and de Massy departed, both their cell phones seemed to become open microphones, and they removed their batteries for the duration of their time in the French capital.

That evening they dined with a trusted contact at Tastevin on the Isle St-Louis, where Paris was born. Their contact's take on things: The French were nervous about MIS and wanted to shut down the investigation into Philippe Narmino. Through Narmino, the French could control Monaco's judicial system because of what they had on him.

The former spymaster, phoned Eringer at dinner's end, when he restarted his cell phone to check messages: "Where in heaven's name are you? Just checking to see if you're still alive."

"I'm fine this evening-check with me tomorrow."

Next day, from London, Eringer phoned the chief of a Balkan intelligence service to ask if he would meet Monaco's police chief on the dates Andre Muhlberger proffered.

"Of course," he replied.

So Muhlberger was informed by de Massy that Eringer had managed to get him a meeting with the right guy, and on the precise date he wanted. Result: The Mule hemmed and hawed, said okay, but wanted to see de Massy for further discussion.

Next morning, de Massy met with Mulhberger. The police chief hedged about traveling to the Balkans, but when reminded he had said he was prepared to go "anywhere in the world" to get to the bottom of this "number one priority" (the Narmino investigation), he agreed to make the trip. De Massy took this opportunity to convey the fax number Muhlberger had agreed to trace through Monaco Telecom.

However, The Mule soon backed out of the trip.

Surprise, surprise. The man who had made the Narmino investigation his "number one priority," and vowed to travel "anywhere in the world" to uncover proof of Narmino's secret money-trail, could not be bothered to travel four hundred and fifty miles even though arrangements had been made for him to meet the intelligence chief on the very day he had requested.

So it was no surprise that The Mule also had decided not to trace the fax number because, said he, it might "make waves."

Furthermore, the police chief told de Massy, all future requests from MIS to SIGER should be channeled through him personally.

But when de Massy requested the police file on Glynn Cohen (of Villa Mangiacane), The Mule outright lied to him, saying no such file existed-a file Eringer then acquired through other means.

Clearly, The Mule had decided he liked his job in Monaco, and wanted to remain indefinitely.

After all, there was always traffic to direct#



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