I briefed the Prince on what I had discovered about Dan FISCHER, as requested by the Prince one month earlier.

He was not German, but Romanian, and had changed his last name from FRANCU after moving to Germany.

FISCHER/FRANKU had not been truthful about this on his application for residency in Monaco; his residency could be revoked on that basis alone.

Lately, FISCHER/FRANCU had been ingratiating himself with Monaco’s mayor, Georges MARSAN, trying to create a Romania-Bulgaria association in Monaco.

He was also suspected of laundering money in Monaco by buying and selling (at a small loss) twenty million dollars worth of jewelry, allegedly part of a Romanian-Bulgarian-Turkish joint effort of organized crime groups to penetrate the Cote d'Azur and compete with Italian and Russian organized crime. Their business was drugs, prostitution and arms trafficking--and the laundering of money derived from such.

In addition to forming an association of these nationalities in Monaco, FISCHER/FRANCU hoped to make Monaco the headquarters of a Romanian telecommunications company he owned. It was for this reason that FISCHER/FRANCO was known to be flirting with Georges MARSAN, the mayor of Monaco, and had organized a trip—hosted by ROM Telecom, paid for by Monaco’s police association—for MARSAN to visit Bucharest.

SIGER believed FISCHER/FRANCU was using women/sex to curry favor with Monaco’s men of influence.

After the Prince departed, I met with an informant from within ASM, Monaco’s football team. He told me that Monaco Football Investment (MFI), ostensibly a private company, had received and was still receiving government funds; that MFI was in fact a Michel PASTOR cover for utilizing government money to support Monaco’s football team--in violation of European football league rules, and rendereing ASM vulnerable to expulsion from the league.

On November 1st, Jean-Luc ALLAVENA--or JLA, as he is known--visited M-Base. I briefed him on the genesis and mission of the Prince’s intelligence service.

It astonished JLA.

Because less than one week before, Minister of State Jean-Paul PROUST had pigeonholed the chef de cabinet-to-be and proposed the formation of… a Monaco intelligence service.

Proust

Clearly, PROUST had finally learned of my service to the Prince--and embarked on a plan to vanquish it with a service of his own.

But JLA had already “connected the dots,” as he put it, and understood that “the information networks at the Palace need cleaning out.” (As one of his final duties as lame-duck chef de cabinet, Raymond BIANCHERI, Franck’s father, had weaseled an honor for his son—plenipotentiary—and leaked news of it to the media even before the Prince had signed off on it.)

I briefed JLA on the service’s most sensitive cases of internal corruption.

I also pointed out that Monaco’s police should investigate internal corruption, not the intelligence service. But the police department was a shambles and needed a new chief.

I also proposed enlarging SIGER, and providing it with better resources, to properly investigate corruption and enforce the laws of Monaco.

I moved onto foreign residents, and how Simon REUBEN had allegedly managed to buy his way back into Monaco through a Palace contact; how Italians engaged in criminal activities queued for citizenship in Monaco as protection from prosecution in Italy.

Incredulous and appalled, JLA requested we meet in Paris in advance of November 15th, the date he would commence his official duties as chef de cabinet.

Jean-Paul PROUST had also snagged the Prince with his idea of creating an intelligence service. He and his allies wanted to hijack the flow of intelligence. They had taken a hard look at what the Prince pledged to change, realized intelligence was the means, and wanted to commandeer and control it.

The Prince and I met that evening (November 1st) at nine o’clock for a working dinner at Fusion, above Stars & Bars on the port.

At my suggestion, the Prince had phoned Mayor Georges MARSAN to warn him off Dan FISCHER/FRANCU. Marsan had been totally awed by the Prince’s awareness, Albert told me.

To PROUST, the Prince had mentioned concern about money launderers in Monaco, whom he itemized. The minister of state had been amazed, maybe perplexed, by the Prince’s knowledge.

The Prince was simply reaping the benefits of a good intelligence service: a feeling of empowerment. Knowledge is power, I reminded him.

So, the Prince asked me, what should he do about PROUST's insistence on creating an official intelligence service?

I responded by saying Albert should tell PROUST that he, the Prince, was one step ahead—that the Prince already had a plan to enlarge SIGER, the police intelligence unit; that it needed two additional officers, greater operational security, and more equipment. (SIGER did not even have a fax machine.) Voila—an official intelligence service--one that the unofficial service had already co-opted!

“Organize this with JLA,” the Prince instructed.

Next day, PROUST moved in on JLA, pushing for an intelligence service that would be run by his crony Alain MALRIC, a Frenchman who headed gambling enforcement for the police. (I already knew that MALRIC allegedly took bribes and had allegedly passed police archive data on Stephane VALERI to Franck BIANCHERI.)

MALRIC was a Freemason in GLNF, the same lodge as PROUST.

MALRIC, PROUST, and BIANCHERI were a troika, and while BIANCHERI was himself not actually a Freemason, he had apparently wanted to be, so PROUST had taken him under his wing to become a member of a Freemason-extension group based in Paris called Club 100, previously called Horizon 2000. As its name suggests, it comprised of a hundred “outsiders” accepted by the Freemasons.

It was a blatant attempt to politicize--if not outright hijack--the Prince’s intelligence apparatus.

JLA put him off, saying the matter would be considered and revisited at the end of November.

That evening the Prince dropped by M-Base for dry martinis—Beefeater gin, two olives, up.

We sat upon stools at the M-Base bar, one of the world’s great views: Monte Carlo, Cap Martin, and Italy’s twinkling lights beyond.

I made the Prince aware of what PROUST was trying to choreograph with Alain MALRIC.

Albert seemed amused, and determined to rebuke his recalcitrant minister of state.

Or so he said.