Clearstream

Clearstream Banking S.A. (CB) is the clearing division of Deutsche Börse, based in Luxembourg. It was created in January 2000 through the merger of Cedel International and Deutsche Börse Clearing, part of the Deutsche Börse Group, which owns the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Cedel, established in 1971, specialized in clearing and settlement. In 1996 it obtained a bank licence. In July 2002 Deutsche Börse purchased the remaining 50% of Clearstream International for €1.6 billion. Deutsche Börse's strategy is to be a vertical securities silo, providing facilities for the front and back end of securities trading. By 2004 Clearstream contributed €114 million to Deutsche Börse's total Earning Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) of €452.6 million. It handled 50.0 million transactions and was custodian of securities worth € 7,593 trillion.

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Accusations

In 2001, investigative reporter Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, executive at Cedel until May 1983, published a book, "Revelation$", in which they alleged Clearstream played a major part in the underground economy, was a main platform of money laundering for hundreds of banks, and that "Clearstream operated hundreds of confidential accounts for banks so they could move money undetected", according to Business Week [1]. Backes and Le Figaro were found guilty of libel on March 29, 2004 after a successful suit by Clearstream; however, the case is due to be heard in Appeal Court in 2006, and all financial demands of Clearstream were rejected by the judges, who considered the information revealed to be "serious and cross-checked, deprived of animosity and expressed with caution".

It has been suggested that the publication of the book led to the resignation of the company's CEO, André Lussi's, while an investigation under the suspicion of money-laundering, tax evasion and other frauds was opened against him. This supposedly enabled Deutsche Börse to purchase the remaining 50% of Clearstream International in July 2002. According to some, such as Business Week, Lussi had opposed such a takeover.

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Clearing

It has often been described as a bank of banks, as it practices what is called financial clearing. Basically, its duty is to record each transaction between the accounts of different banks, and using that data to calculate the relative financial positions of banks with regard to each other.

So a bank can just order a transaction between their account and the other bank's account in lieu of less secure methods like carrying a case full of currency or securities around; it merely transmits an order to Clearstream to credit/debit one of their own accounts and their counterpart bank's account(s). This general kind of system is in use between regular companies, and governments, and banks around the world.

The purpose of Clearstream is to facilitate money movements around the world, particularly by handling the resolution of European stocks and bonds, in which market Clearstream was a major player, with an estimated 40% market share until May 2004 - with Euroclear, they together settle 70% of European transactions [2]. Furthermore, in 2002, Clearstream was the 12th biggest employer in Luxembourg [3]. Clearstream does not hold a monopoly in this market: Euroclear, owned by Euronext, and SWIFT are competitors. However, SWIFT mainly assures routing, while only Euroclear and Clearstream supply cross-borders securities clearing and settlement services; Clearstream's quasi-monopoly is demonstrated by this European Union statement declaring that "Clearstream Banking AG is an unavoidable trader partner" [4]. Euroclear was created by JP Morgan in 1968 in Brussels (Belgium). By the end of 2000, JP Morgan had extricated itself from Euroclear, but JP Morgan is still one of the 120 international banks to owns share in Euroclear. In 2000, Euroclear processed 145 million transactions in 2000, dealing with in total, 100,000 billions euros [5].

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"$1.5 trillion math errors"

According to Business Week, "Clearstream, which handles the back-office paperwork for some 40% of European stock and bond trades, was found to have overstated its assets in custody by $1.5 trillion. (It has $6.5 trillion.) If Clearstream makes $1.5 trillion math errors, customers are understandably nervous - and some have moved to rival Euroclear." [1]. According to Lucy Komisar, Clearstream is audited by KPMG, one of the world global accounting firms. KPMG declared that it found "no evidence" to support the allegations made by Denis Robert and Ernest Backes, though its report was not made public.

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Clearstream's dominant position

On June 2, 2004, the European Commission found "that Clearstream Banking AG and its parent company Clearstream International SA (“Clearstream”) infringed competition rules by refusing to supply cross-border securities clearing and settlement services and by applying discriminatory prices. The Commission’s investigation revealed that Clearstream refused to supply Euroclear Bank SA (“Euroclear Bank”) with certain clearing and settlement services and applied discriminatory prices to the detriment of this customer." The decision states that "Clearstream refused to supply to Euroclear Bank clearing and settlement services for registered shares issued under German law", underlining the "dominant position" of Clearstream since it "is the only final custodian of German securities kept in collective safe custody, which is the only significant form of custody today for securities traded. New entry into this activity is unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Clearstream is an unavoidable trading partner."

The Commission defined clearing and settlement as follow:

"Securities clearing and settlement are necessary steps for a securities trade to be completed.
Clearing is the process by which the contractual obligations of the buyer and the seller are established.
Settlement is the transfer or securities from the seller to the buyer and the transfer of funds from the buyer to the seller. (...)
Clearstream Banking AG is Germany's only Wertpapiersammelbank (Central Securities Depository). The Commission considered that during the reference period concerned, 1997 through 2001, Clearstream held a dominant position for providing cross-border clearing and settlement services to intermediaries situated in other Member States. The investigation therefore focused on a specific cross-border market and the decision does not set out findings that go beyond that relevant market."

It underlined in a note that "Central Securities Depositories hold securities and enable securities transactions to be processed through book entry. In its home country, the Central Securities Depository provides processing services for trades of those securities that it holds in final custody. It can also offer processing services as an intermediary in cross-border clearing and settlement, where the primary deposit of securities is in another country." [4]

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Controversy

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Daewoo shutdown inquiries

After Daewoo was split apart in the year 2000, Clearstream was the subject of two commissions of inquiry in Lorraine (France) conducted before the French parliament and European parliament).

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"The greatest financial scandal in Luxembourg"

In 2001, Denis Robert and Ernest Backes released a book called "Révélation$", followed by "La Boîte Noire", describing what has been named the "greatest financial scandal in the Duchy of Luxembourg" [6]. The little publicity that their works received were in the French media, and even there, publicity was minimal. In a number of interviews, Denis Robert has accused "Le Monde" of deliberately suppressing articles and reviews of his book, suggesting that financial links between "Le Monde" and Deutsche Börse, (which now owns 100% of Clearstream's shares) were the cause of this censorship. Denis Robert described Clearstream as a huge money laundering and tax evasion machine, used by major banks, shell companies and organized crime all over the world.

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Eurodollars

Cedel (now Clearstream) and Euroclear were started to manage transfers of "eurodollars", U.S. currency kept in banks outside the United States. Eurodollars were invented by the Chinese and the Soviets in the 1950s so they would not have to put their assets in banks where the US government could seize them. By the 1990s, the Federal Reserve estimated that about 2/3 of U.S. currency was held abroad as eurodollars. Cedel and Euroclear later expanded into operating transfers of stock titles and other financial instruments. In 1975, several big Italian and German banks wanted to centralize their accounting so that other members of Cedel directly sent them transfers to the main branch. "The Cedel council of administration - its board of directors - authorized banks with multiple subsidiaries not to put all their accounts on the list. Backes and Gérard Soisson, then Cedel's general manager, set up a system of non-published accounts (...) Requests for non-published accounts came from some banks that weren't eligible, but Soisson turned them down", writes Komisar.

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Banco Ambrosiano scandal

Further information: Banco Ambrosiano, and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]]

By 1980, Ernest Backes had become Cedel's #3, in charge of relations with clients, but he was fired in May 1983, allegedly because he "knew too much about the Ambrosiano scandal", one of Italy's major political scandals. Two months after his dismissal, Gérard Soisson was found dead in Corsica. The Banco Ambrosiano, allegedly involved in money-laundering for the mafia and owned in majority by the Vatican Bank, collapsed in 1982. It "laundered drugs- and arms-trafficking money for the Italian and American mafias and, in the 1980s, channeled Vatican money to the Contras in Nicaragua and Solidarity in Poland", according to Komisar.

As of 2005, while the Italian justice has opened up again the investigation concerning the murder of Roberto Calvi, Ambrosiano's chairman, it has asked the support of Ernest Backes, and will investigate Gerard Soisson's death, according to Komisar. Licio Gelli, headmaster of Propaganda Due masonic lodge (aka P2, it was involved in Gladio's "strategy of tension" starting from the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing), and mafiosi Giuseppe Calo, are being prosecuted for the assassination of Roberto Calvi. Ernest Backes explained: "When Soisson died, the Ambrosiano affair wasn't yet known as a scandal. (After it was revealed) I realized that Soisson and I had been at the crossroads. We moved all those transactions known later in the scandal to Lima and other branches. Nobody even knew there was a Banco Ambrosiano branch in Lima and other South American countries." [2]

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Secret accounts

Gérard Soisson, murdered in July 1983, was the one to authorize each non-published account, "which would be known only by some insiders, including the auditors and members of the council of administration". "With Soisson out of the way, there was nothing to stop the abuse of the system, wrote Lucy Komisar. Whereas Soisson had refused numerous requests to open non-published accounts (from such institutions as Chase Manhattan in New York, the Chemical Bank of London and numerous subsidiaries of Citibank), Cedel opened hundreds of non-published accounts in total irregularity - especially after the arrival of CEO André Lussi in 1990. No longer were they just sub-accounts of officially listed accounts, Backes charges. Some were for banks that weren't subsidiaries or even official members of Cedel. At the start of 1995, Cedel had more than 2,200 published accounts. But in reality, according to documents obtained by Backes, Cedel that year managed more than 4,200 accounts."

Régis Hempel, vice-president of Cedel, explained to the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance how the system of unpublished accounts was generalized, allowing all types of illegal operations; Clearstream, during the courtsuit against Denis Robert for "defamation", did not deny it (See below). According to Hempel, some dormant accounts were activated for special transactions: "Such an account can be opened in the morning, used for a transaction, and closed to appear as delisted in the evening", Backes explains. "Only the guy who gave the order to open it in the morning knows about the transaction. An investigator or auditor would not look at such an account because it doesn't appear on the accounts list".

Among the major companies with unpublished accounts, Backes discovered the Shell Petroleum Group and the Dutch agricultural firm Unilever, one of whose accounts was associated with Goldman Sachs. "By 2000, according to Backes, Clearstream managed about 15 000 accounts (of which half were non-published) for 2 500 clients in 105 countries; most of the investment companies, banks and their subsidiaries are from Western Europe and the United States. Most of the new non-published accounts were in offshore tax havens. The banks with the most non-published accounts are Banque Internationale de Luxembourg (309), Citibank (271) and Barclays (200) (...) On the April 2000 Clearstream list, they are 37 Colombian accounts, of which only three are published. " [3] German multinational Siemens had four non-published accounts, while Crédit Lyonnais bank had 23 and Japanese Nomura 12 [7].

This system of unpublished accounts made it possible to hide money for the purposes of money laundering, tax evasion, accounting manipulation and fraud. It was used by a large variety of banks, among them Columbian banks linked to the drug cartel, Bank Menatep involved in the "Kremlingate", the French Credit Lyonnais involved in a major crash in the 1990s, and Osama Ben Laden's Bahrain International Bank. The money from the Taiwan frigates French scandal transited by Clearstream, as did the money from Elf oil company. Clearstream also held part of the Argentine debt which led to the December 2001 riots. Numerous unpublished accounts were owned by Argentine companies and by the Citibank, which managed a large part of Argentine funds.

Another revelation of Denis Robert's book, according to the May 9, 2001 op-ed by Bernard Bertossa, attorney general in Geneva, Benoît Dejemeppe, king's attorney in Bruxelles (procureur du roi), Eva Joly, judge (juge d'instruction) in Paris, Jean de Maillard, magistrate in Blois and Renaud van Ruymbeke, judge in Paris, titled "The 'black boxes' of financial globalization" is that:

"the chaos of financial flux is only an appeareance. Of course, offshore banks and tax havens perfectly hide the points of arrival and of transit of dirty capital. It is even their reason of existence (raison d'être). Trying to find the illegal money flux in those offshore centers is hopelessly doomed... However, since capital from criminal origin pass in the same financial 'pipes' as otherones [legal funds], i.e. clearing and financial routage companies, they become vulnerable precisely during their transfer [in those clearing companies]." [8]

In other words, all financial flux, legal or illegal, have to pass through Clearstream or Euroclear; the system of un-published accounts, of which a few (less than 10%) were also found at Euroclear, is the way illegal funds are metamorphosed, as by the philosopher's stone, in legal funds which can be used to buy any financial service.

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A "black box" of Cedel

Backes also explained that a company called Cedel International, located in Geneva, had been inscribed in the Swiss register of commerce but not included in the books of the mother company, Cedel International in Luxembourg. "This non-consolidated 'branch', whose president is Robert Douglass of New York, former private secretary of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, is now vice chairman of the Chase Manhattan Corporation [now J.P. Morgan Chase] , had apparently not raised too many questions for Swiss federal magistrates". Backes qualified this "black box" as "institutionalized tax evasion at highest level in world finance", noting that tax evasion was even "more or less expressed in the objectives of the company as filed in the Swiss register of commerce." The 'branch' has since "been resold to another Luxembourg holding company, with the people in the backyard remaining mostly the same."

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Juridical investigations & libel courtsuits

Following the publication of "Revelation$", the tribunal of Luxembourg opened up an investigation on February 26th, 2001. The judge declared that no proofs of "systematic manipulations" were found, but they did acknowledged the existence of proofs concerning accounting manipulation and tax evasion [9]. However, they dropped the case on the 30th of November 2004- no charges could be laid due to the statute of limitations. The Reuters cable describing the closing of the money laundering probe avoids all mention of the reasons behind the dropping of the case: i.e. the statute of limitations. This is rather unusual for such a news agency, but needs to be put into context. Deutsche Börse is now the owner of Clearstream and Reuters is dependent on it to supply its data feed to their subscribers. Beside Clearstream, Deutsche Börse also owns the German Stock Exchange and Eurex terminal market. Furthermore, the cable stated that Clearstream successfully sued Backes and French newspaper "Le Figaro" for libel on March 29, 2004, but deliberately failed to follow up the initial October 1, 2003 judgements (see below). Ironically, Reuters quoted Deutsche Boerse's Chairman Designate André Roelants as stating that "this announcement is very important as it closes once and for all this chapter." [10]. In 2003, the Paris Court had rejected all of the finance company's requests (Clearstream was seeking damages of 500,000 Euros because of "defamation"). The judges considered that the information revealed on the activities of money-laundering by Clearstream were "serious and cross-checked, deprived of animosity and expressed with caution" [11]. The suit is due to be examined by the Appeal Court in 2006.

Denis Robert has also been sued for defamation by others banks and companies incriminated by the book (50+ different cases - among whom Bank Menatep, Banque Générale du Luxembourg, etc., in which the author and his editor Laurent Beccaria were acquitted in all but two cases, where damages - for both cases - were awarded of one Euro). On January 27, 2006, once more Denis Robert was charged by a Luxembourgian committing magistrate for defamation, slander and insults. A complaint had been opened in March 2001 against Ernest Backes, and Denis Robert got included in it five years later: "I am very surprised of this accusation five years after the facts and of the energy which the Luxembourgian justice puts continuing me while it was not at the end of the inquiry opened for money laundering, tax evasion and corruption against Clearstream", Roberts let know. A collective, "Freedom to inform", declared to Le Nouvel Observateur magazine that "By transforming the affair Robert in affair Frieden (famous Luxembourgian Minister of Justice, of the Treasury and the Budget), every signature will be a civil act which protects the freedom of the media in Europe." [12]

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Suspension and prosecution of Clearstream's CEO

On May 15, 2001, André Lussi, CEO of Clearstream, was suspended of his functions, before being definitely dismissed on December 31th, 2001 [13][14]. On February 2004, an investigation was opened against him, under the suspicions of money-laundering, fraud and other tax evasion charges [15][16]. André Lussi was replaced by André Roelants, who was before with Dexia.

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"Capital Tax, Fiscal Systems and Globalization" intergroup of the European Parliament

With Ernest Backes, Denis Robert presented Revelation$ to the Capital Tax, Fiscal Systems and Globalization intergroup of the European Parliament in March 2001 and also to the French National Assembly. The European Commission did not react to the question raised by European MPs Harlem Désir, Glyn Ford and Francis Wurtz, who asked the Commission to investigate the accusations brought forward by the book and to ensure that the 10 June 1990 directive (91/308 CE) on control of financial establishment be applied in all member states in an effective way. Commissioner Bolkestein applied that "the Commission has no reason to date to believe that the Luxembourg authorities do not apply it vigorously". (sic) The three MPs henceforth published a press statement asking the opening of an investigation by the European Union about the correct application of the June 10, 1990 directive [19] [16].

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Nadhmi Auchi, largest private share-holder of BNP Paribas bank

Strangely, Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, #34 on "Sunday Times Rich List 2004" (#22 on 2005's list) but 13th richest man in Britain according to The Guardian, estimated to be worth $1 billion according to Forbes, also appeared to be a key figure in the implementation of the double accounting system [17]. Auchi was convicted of illicit profiteering by the Paris Criminal Court and received a 15-month suspended sentence for his involvement in Elf's scandal, "the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War. Elf became a private bank for its executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments" [18]. The "Guardian" noted that Nadhmi Auchi had helped Orascom (which owns Djezzy GSM), owned by Onsi Sawiris (worth $5.2 billion with his family according to Forbes [19]), gain a contract to set-up mobile phone networks in post-Saddam's Iraq. Moreover, as owner of the General Mediterranean Holdings, Auchi is the largest private share-holder of BNP Paribas, which until 2001 had the escrow account through which the money from the Oil-for-Food programme transited.

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Bank Menatep

Further information: Bank Menatep, and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]], and [[]]

Bank Menatep, owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was involved in the "Kremlingate", when $4.8 billions IMF funds were diverted to various banks, including US banks [20]. It opened up its non-published Cedel account #81 738 on May 15, 1997. "Menatep further violated the rules because many transfers were of cash, not for settlement of securities", writes Komisar. "For the three months in 1997 for which I hold microfiches, Backes says, only cash transfers were transferred through the Meanatep account. They were a lot of transfers between Menatep and the Bank of New York." Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, a former Bank of New York official and the wife of Menatep vice president, was accused of helping launder at least $7 billions from Russia, according to Komisar. US investigators have attempted to find out if some of the laundered money originated with Menatep.

On November 26, 2003, Backes and another ex-banker, Swiss citizen André Strebel, filed a criminal complaint with the Swiss attorney general against Khodorkovsky and his colleagues Platon Lebedev and Alexei Golubovich, accusing them of money laundering and supporting a criminal organization. They asked the opening of an investigation and the research of records of the Swiss office of Menatep SA; Menatep Finances SA and Valmet and of Bank Leu in Geneva related to investigative claims of fraud against the Russian company Avisma and money laundering by Menatep in Switzerland. According to this complaint, Bank Menatep has been linked since its creation to the Russian oligarchy and criminal organizations, such as Khodorkovsky, Alexander Konanykhine and the Russian godfather Semyon Mogilvich. "Even though Menatep officially failed in 1998, it oddly remained on the non-published list of Clearstream account for 2000", writes Komisar. Clearstream also lists 36 other Russian accounts, most non-published [21].

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The French-Taiwan frigates scandal

The Taiwan frigates scandal was one of the biggest French scandal of the 1990s. France sold six frigates to Taiwan at the start of the 1990s, which led to huge amounts of kickbacks, with Andrew Wang as a major figure. The kickbacks were exposed after the 1993 murder of naval captain Yin Ching-Feng, who had written a critical report on the purchase, worth $2.8 billions. Eight deaths have been linked to the affair, and 13 military officers and 15 arms dealers were sentenced by Taiwan courts to between eight months and life in prison for bribery and leaking military secrets [22] [23]. The money for these illegal percentage fee transited through Clearstream, according to Denis Robert.

Following the publication of "Revelation$", Joël Bucher, former deputy general director of the Taiwan branch of Société Générale (SG), wrote to Luxembourg prosecutor Carlos Zeyen, investigating Clearstream, to testify that SG used Clearstream to hide bribes and to launder money. "In the early 1990s, Bucher contends, Cedel was used to launder $350 million in illegal 'commissions' on a contract for the sale by Thomson-CSF, a French government arms company, of six French frigates to Taiwan. HE said that the money, handled by a SG subsidiary, was paid as a registered securities transfer to a 'nominee' - a stand-in for the real beneficiary - and that Thomson (now known as Thales) didn't appear in the transaction except in the Cedel archives. He said SG used two non-published Cedel accounts."

Furthermore, an investigation was opened up in July, 2004 by Paris following June 14, 2004 anonymous denunciations concerning the Taiwan frigates scandal. According to those denunciations, Andrew Wang, one of Taiwan's key figures concerning arms contracts, passed on money to several very important French officials from 1999 to 2003, using Clearstream [24][25]. Colombians drug-dealers and a Russian oligarch also issued some of those payments, according to the corbeau (French expression for an anonymous delator)[26]. Andrew Wang had perceived a high part of the illegal fees given during the selling of the six frigates. According to Luxembourg's public prosecutor, the investigation has not confirmed money laundering suspicions concerning the Taiwan frigates and Bank Menatep, owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky. However, Dominique de Talancé and Renaud Van Ruymbeke, French judges in charge of the Taiwan frigates investigation, made a perquisition in Clearstream's offices in Luxembourg. Just in case... But in January 2006, both judges declared the case closed, stating that the corbeau 's list of Clearstream accounts owned by various political figures was a fraud. For example, the numbered Banca popolare di Sondrio Clearstream account, supposedly to the name of "Stéphane Bocsa" and "Paul de Nagy" - probable contender for the 2007 presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy's full true name is Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa -, was not Sarkozy's personal account, but an account used by various persons, according to the declarations of the Banca popolare di Sondrio to judge Ruymbeke. Henceforth, the Italian bank asked the judge for a new subpoena concerning a specific person. However, the judges didn't bother, because, according to L'Express, the "investigation proves that all accounts designed by the 'corbeau' are falsely attributed to [important] personalities. Furthermore, the authors of this fraud are known, even though there exist no proofs allowing to prosecute them. But the mystery remains: have they acted alone, or under command? And why did they choose the town of Sondrio for the ghost account of Sarkozy?" [27]. The "mystery" indeed remains, since the news article only states that the accounts are "falsely attributed", but not that they do not exist; furthermore, the judges have decided not to ask the Sondrio bank a suboena personally targeting Nicolas Sarkozy, for unknown reasons. The lack of independence of the French justice from the executive power has often been criticized by the Syndicat de la magistrature, a magistrate trade union.

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"Tracking Terrorist Money, too hot for US to handle?"

Bahrain International Bank, which has been suspected of moving Osama bin Laden's money, had an account number in Clearstream, according to the records given by Ernest Backes [18].

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Banks with accounts in Clearstream

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References

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Endnotes

  1. ↑ a b "Europe Needs an Independent Settlement System", Business Week, June 4, 2001.
  2. ↑ "Slugfest over Europe's Stock Exchanges", Business Week, November 19, 2001.
  3. ↑ a b  "Offshore banking: the secret threat to America", Hound Dogs, 2003. (by investigative reporter Lucy Komisar)
  4. ↑  Luxembourg's 12th employer according to official statistics
  5. ↑ a  European Commission June 2, 2004 decision on Clearstream's infringement of competition rules, decision IP/04/705
  6. (French)↑ "142 millions de transactions en 2000", Le Monde, June 01, 2001.
  7. (French)↑  France 2
  8. ↑  (see chapter on Russia in "Globalization and Its Discontents" by Joseph Stiglitz, former vice-president of the World Bank)
  9. ↑ "Unlawful debt or financial crime against human development", ATTAC, June 30, 2001. (available in French and Spanish)
  10. ↑ "Clearstream being investigated for tax evasion, Spiegel says", Bloomberg, May 24, 2001.
  11. ↑  The December 1, 2004 Reuters article (11:27:47) was authored by gilles.castonguay.reuters.com@reuters.net (Tel. +32 2 287 6810, Fax +32 2 230 77 10 belgium.newsroom@reuters.com).
  12. ↑ "A petition of support to Denis Roberts", Le Nouvel Observateur, February 22, 2006. (petition available here)
  13. ↑ "Lussi suspension ignites battle for control of Clearstream", Finextra, May 17, 2001.; "Affären: Die Spur des Geldes", Der Spiegel, May 21, 2001.
  14. ↑ "Clearstream faces cash probe", Money Telegraph, May 17, 2001.
  15. (French)↑ "L'ex-PDG de Clearstream inculpé", Le Monde, February 6, 2004.
  16. ↑ a  "André Lussi, CEO of Clearstream, stepping down - interview of Denis Robert", Tobin tax, June 2001.
  17. (French)↑  "La société Clearstream perd son procès contre Denis Robert", Attac, October 10, 2003.; "The Clearstream company loses its lawsuit against Denis Robert", Attac, October 10, 2003.
  18. ↑ a "Tracking Terrorist Money - 'Too Hot for US to handle?' by Lucy Komisar", Pacific News Service, October 4, 2001.
  19. (French)↑ a Harlem Désir's official website (European MPs Harlem Désir, Glyn Ford and Francis Wurtz press statement about the $1.5 trillion math error & Denis Robert and Ernest Backes' book "Revelation$" and a May 9, 2001 op-ed in Le Monde titled "Les 'boîtes noires' de la mondialisation financière" ("The black box of financial globalization") by Bernard Bertossa, attorney general in Geneva, Benoît Dejemeppe, king's attorney in Bruxelles (procureur du roi), Eva Joly, judge (juge d'instruction) in Paris, Jean de Maillard, magistrate in Blois and Renaud van Ruymbeke, judge in Paris)
  20. ↑  Forbes_Auchi
  21. ↑  "The politics of sleaze", The Guardian, November 16, 2003.
  22. (French)↑  Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance court decision, dated October 1, 2003, condemning Clearstream to pay 3 500 Euros to Denis Robert
  23. ↑  Forbes_Sawiris
  24. ↑  "After 15 years of silence, the key figure speaks (English translation on Andrew Wang's official website", Le Point, September 9, 2004.
  25. ↑ "France silent on Taiwan frigates scandal", BBC News, June 21, 2002.
  26. (French)↑  "Chuan-pu Andrew Wang, intermédiaire taïwanais dans le commerce d'armes: 'Je n'ai jamais payé de commissions à un politique français'", Le Monde, October 20, 2004.
  27. (French)↑ "Cette ténébreuse affaire qui oppose Sarkozy à Villepin", Le Monde, November 10, 2004.
  28. (French)↑ "Une lettre anonyme ouvre la piste Clearstream", Le Monde, May 15, 2004.
  29. (French)↑ "Clearstream: le mystère s'éclaircit", L'Express, January 19, 2006.
  30. ↑ US Securities and Exchange Commission response to a Carlyle request for confidential treatment
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See also

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External links

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Main sources

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Media reports

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In English

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In French (Google transl. available)

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Others languages

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Others

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