A TRIFECTA OF TALES FROM MONACO INTELLIGENCE
Santa Barbara News-Press Column
At five o’clock in the afternoon I stood in the lobby of London’s elegant Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane awaiting my guest: Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. This encounter was arranged by a senior intelligence official from Latvia on the basis that Berezovsky might be useful to the intelligence service I had created for Prince Albert of Monaco.
It is imperative in the intelligence business to arrive early and scope out the environment of a planned rendezvous. This would especially pertain to meeting Berezovsky, President Putin’s Target Number One at a time when Mad Vlad was having his opponents and critics bumped off, especially those oligarchs who did not cut him a slice of their wealth.
Who knew what assassins might be lurking?
Because if Putin was the New Russia’s New Stalin (and he was, still is), Berezovsky was the New Trotsky (and now just as dead).
Boris rounded through the Dorchester’s revolving door with the expression of a scared squirrel. He glanced around nervously while two very tall British bodyguards behind him scanned the lobby for enemies.
Of course, Berezovsky wasn’t frightened of me, but petrified of his arch-nemesis Putin’s proclivity for poisoning his opponents with polonium. Or lead bullets. Or death from falling. Or neckties.
I walked over, offered my right hand. “Hi Boris—can I buy you a drink?” (I’d always wanted to say that to a billionaire.)
“Not here,” said the short, dark Berezovsky, his shifty eyes alternating focus on various dark shadows. “Let’s go to the Ambassador Club.”
The goons backtracked. One spoke into a two-way radio. “Coming out,” he whispered.
Berezovsky and I were ushered into the backseat of his armor-plated, bullet-proof Bentley parked just outside the hotel’s revolving door. The two goons sat up front. Fifteen seconds and 300 yards later we pulled up to Berezovsky’s upscale private club where I was ID’d and photographed before allowed entry as a guest.
Boris led me to the very far end of the bar (which was empty at this hour) so he could place his back against a wall. He ordered a pot of Earl Grey Tea, honey and lemon, and finger sandwiches for two.
“So what can I do for you?” I asked.
This caught Berezovsky off guard. “I don’t know. What is the framework of our meeting?”
“The Latvians arranged it,” I said. “I direct an intelligence service for Prince Albert of Monaco.”
THE ISSUE
“Ah,” said the oligarch.
He then explained that he had been invited by the governor of Colorado to attend a conference in Aspen. He wanted to go but had a small problem: He was barred from entering the United States. Boris further explained that he had repeatedly phoned the U.S. embassy in London to try to make an appointment to discuss the situation but they would not return his calls.
“They won’t say ‘yes’ and they won’t say ‘no,’” he added.
“Why not?”
“Because of President Bush’s relationship with Putin,” said Berezovsky. The U.S. government, he explained, would not do anything that might offend the Russians. He added that his friendship with Neil Bush, the president’s brother, had not proven fruitful to alter this stance. Berezovsky said he had another friend, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, who, on this issue “can’t make a dent.” Another friend, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, “always sees me but won’t rock the boat on this.” Yet another friend, former President Bill Clinton, “won’t touch it.”
So I’m sitting there thinking, if Rupert Murdoch, Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton could not help Berezovsky enter the United States, I did not know why or how he expected ME to pull it off.
Nonetheless, Berezovsky promised me he wouldn’t make a fuss if I allowed him into the United States. And he claimed to know many important things of interest to the U. S. government through people inside the SVR and FSB. So like others before him, I gather, Berezovsky thought I worked for the CIA, and he wanted to horse-trade: An entry visa for intelligence.
While I gently tried to explain I had no such authority to assist in this regard Berezovsky’s cell phone constantly jingled, until he finally handed it to his bodyguard and snapped, “Take it away, and don’t interrupt me unless it’s an urgent call.”
Two minutes later the goon returned. “It’s Uri Geller,” whispered the goon.
So Berezovsky spoke with Uri Geller, the Israeli celebrity psychic and spoon bender, for two minutes, though nothing about their conversation seemed urgent and I felt I was in some kind of surreal comedy show.
When Berezovsky finally finished with Geller (the logistics for dinner that evening), he told me that Putin would extend his rule beyond 2008 (turns out he was right) because “Putin has too many enemies to give up power.” Berezovsky further told me the only solution for Russia was coup d’état by the military and following that he—Berezovsky—would immediately return to Moscow and run Russia with Mikhail Khodorkovsky (the oil tycoon then imprisoned by Putin).
Apparently, I was not the only person to whom Berezovsky so indiscreetly spouted. A few weeks later his insurrectionist stance got reported in the media, resulting in a censure from the British government after protests from Putin.
I mentioned my bizarre meeting with Boris to a senior member of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (a necessary courtesy as I was on their turf), asking if continued contact might have any upside for our service in Monaco. My friend looked at me mournfully. After a few moments silence, he said quietly, “There’s nothing but death associated with Boris Berezovsky.”
We declined further contact with Boris and within a few years he himself became fully associated with death, having been discovered strangled in the bathroom of his ultra-secure mansion in Britain with a ligature tied around his neck.
It was called a “suicide” due to “depression.”
Berezovsky had never been treated for depression and had been looking forward to upcoming engagements. As for paranoia, which was fully justified, he took precautions, not prescriptions.
But even a bullet-proof Bentley, burly bodyguards and home security systems were not enough to save Boris from Russia’s New Stalin.
GOTCHA’D
Grigori “Gotcha” Arivadze, from the Republic Georgia, is probably the person most responsible for bringing Mad Vlad Putin into Prince Albert II of Monaco’s orbit.
Early in our service to the Prince we learned that his corrupt senior aide-de-camp, Bruno Philipponnat, was instigating a plan for Albert to visit Azerbaijan (a former Soviet republic), with Arivadze as part of the entourage. We already knew that Philipponnat was abusing his position by befriending the Prince’s personal friends in addition to taking cash payments from those who desired entry into Albert’s social orbit.
The danger, it seemed to us, was that the prince’s personal friends—in association with Philipponnat—would use their relationships with Albert to make business deals, from which they stood to gain financially.
In this instance, we looked at two such friends through whom Arivadze had been introduced to Philipponnat: Robert Munsch, an American optometrist from St. Louis, and Preston Haskins, a Moscow-based Texan businessman. Munsch was overheard (by one of our spies) to say—in the Bar Americaine of Hotel de Paris—that he needed to “get Albert to Azerbaijan” so he could make a lot of money in an oil deal.
Thus, at my next briefing for the Prince (on November 21st, 2002) in Hotel Columbus, I had some questions:
· Would it bother you if close personal friends of yours were making money through taking advantage of their relationship with you?
· Would you want to know about it?
· Would it bother you if persons in your employ abused their positions to receive commissions, kickbacks or silent partnerships?
· Would you want to know about it?
The Prince answered “yes” to all. So with his explicit permission, we added the names of Munsch, Haskins and Albert’s own aide-de-camp to our ever-widening radar screen.
Our enquiries quickly identified “Gotcha” Arivadze, the Georgian businessman based in Moscow, as the mystery man from Bar Americaine. At our request, two intelligence services ran traces on Arivadze and swiftly reported him to be of very dubious character.
Later, Sergey of Russian intelligence provided a report on Arivadze, ex-operator of ARSI gas stations in Russia, which validated the negative data we had on Gotcha.
Yet Albert allowed Arivadze’s infiltration of his social orbit to continue. The Georgian soon became tight with Michael Smurfit, the Irish cardboard box tycoon, another one of Albert’s hangers-on who also strove to make the royal court his playground.
As for Bruno Philipponnat, we would eventually discover that he was not only accepting cash-for-access to the prince but also earning commissions and kickbacks from business entities such as Red Bull. Sometimes, unbeknownst to Albert, Philipponnat was doing so in the Prince’s name (as if Albert was the recipient of a kickback and not himself).
Jean-Raymond Gottlieb of the Monaco police department’s SIGER unit was also aware of Bruno Philipponnat’s impropriety and alleged kickbacks but was powerless to do anything about it.
In early March, the Prince traveled to Moscow with these fellers—Munsch, Haskins, a dishonest Swede named Carl Carlsson—hosted by Gotcha Arivadze, who rented a brothel for the night to celebrate Albert’s birthday.
The Prince, as such, ignored our reporting on Carlsson and Arivadze, and doubtless did not heed our advice regarding security concerns while traveling in Russia. It is almost a certainty the FSB would secretly record activities in his hotel bedroom, which, depending on the nature of such activities, could lead to blackmail one day.
All of these so-called “friends” did their very best to cling to the Prince’s coattails. Albert’s friendship was their ticket to getting laid and for demanding special treatment while in Monaco.
We would eventually learn that while the Prince was away in Austria, a Russian general presided over an award ceremony in Palais de Monaco at which he presented Bruno Phillipponnat with a decoration, attended by a Russian named Leonid Sloutsky (now president of the Russian Duma Committee on Foreign Relations) and, of course, Gotcha Arivadze.
Such antics had reached the point of absurdity.
It was almost by accident that we then uncovered Villa Mangiacane, the old Machiavelli estate in San Casciano near Florence, Italy, in which Arivadze was a secret co-owner (a way for him to launder money).
Decorated in erotica, this getaway was an Eyes Wide Shut decadent den of iniquity where Arivadze and the fellers would bring under-age models for boozy weekend parties lubricated by house wine from the Arivadze Cave.
During the week we visited, Arivadze was playing host to a dozen Russians from the energy sector and senior members of Russian intelligence. What’s more, Arivadze was hosting them in the Prince’s name, boasting to those assembled that the brand new 2007 Rolls Royce parked outside with Monaco plates T245 belonged to the Prince and was on loan to Gotcha especially for this meeting.
This was a lie (of course), confirmed to me by Prince Albert himself. We traced ownership of the Rolls Royce. It was registered to Francesco Bongiovanni, a friend of Albert's. We believed Arivadze secretly owned the Rolls—as he did the villa—but put property in the names of others to conceal his ownership and evade taxes.
By then we believed that Arivadze was Moscow’s lightning rod in Monaco and, by using his influence with the Prince via aide-de-camp Bruno Philipponnat, he would pave the road 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 fellow travelers on their team.
Arivadze also received an award at the Kremlin from President Putin on an occasion attended by Philipponnat and several of Albert’s friends.
We speculate Arivadze was honored by Putin for his access to (and influence with) the Prince, mostly through Philipponnat.
On behalf of the Prince, the aide-de-camp handled Russian business exclusively through General Vladimir Pronichev, Commander of the Federal Border Guards, who oversaw Russia’s cooperation on a North Pole expedition undertaken by Albert.
By choreographing the Russian “gift” of a dacha, which was built from scratch by Russian laborers on the Prince’s country estate, Roc Agel, and commenced soon after Albert’s return from meeting Putin in Moscow, it was this project that cemented Philipponnat’s relationship with General Pronichev and the Russians.
CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL
I have already written in an earlier column, Putin’s Pet Principality, that Prince Albert’s embracement of Russia’s Vladimir Putin was the seminal event leading to my dismantling of the intelligence service I created for the Prince.
But there was another issue that played a role in my departure and it was an internal scandal pertaining to a pair of Albert’s closest advisers/scoundrels: Paris-based lawyer Thierry Lacoste and the Palace accountant Claude Palmero.
Both were terribly corrupt.
Our service, working closely with Monaco’s police department, caught the pair of them red-handed. Lacoste and Palmero were in cahoots with one another to enrich themselves at Monaco’s expense.
This is how these dirty-dealing sore losers became big winners.
Monaco’s government had much earlier invited blue-chip vendors to bid for the construction of the Larvotto Project, a land reclamation project off Monte Carlo’s beach to build habitable space upon the sea. This project was similar to what Monaco had achieved decades earlier in a suburban spinoff called Fontvieille.
These vendors paid millions of euros in fees just to formulate their bids and become part of the selection process.
Except for one, none of the vendors knew that the odds were heavily stacked against them from the get-go.
How so?
Because Lacoste and Palmero had made secret deals to become silent partners with one of the vendors, the Marzocco-Schriqui-Vinci consortium, in exchange for using their influence to rig the winning bid their way. And when Marzocco-Schriqui-Vinci got ruled out in the final round, Lacoste and Palmero convinced the Prince to terminate the Larvotto project altogether on the basis that it was bad for the environment.
However, from the beginning, all vendors were required to innovate the land reclamation into an environmental showcase—an example to the world of how modern construction can be executed without negative ecological impact. And they did just that.
Thus, the official reason for cancelling the project was bogus and these vendors had wasted their time and money.
A Palace insider told us back then: “They [Lacoste and Palmero] plan to resurrect the Larvotto project in a few years’ time, start fresh and get another shot at winning the bid.”
And, years later, that is precisely what happened.
Monaco’s own police department confirmed this arrangement to us having discovered the corruption while investigating Marzocco-Schriqui’s funding. They determined that this funding had derived from a Russian mafia figure—an ethnic Korean from Kazakhstan named Oleg Davidovic Kim.
Kim, we then discovered, had falsified a Letter of Credit from the Bank of Tokyo. The bank's senior representatives affirmed to investigators that their bank never issued such a guarantee and that their signatures were forged. Yet with this letter of credit Kim managed to borrow $55 million from the Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant.
The Russian who arranged this “short-term” loan was Yuri Kolpakov. According to sources in the Russian government, investigators believe Kim then "ordered the killing" of Kolpakov in retaliation for pursuing the unpaid $55 million loan and for reporting Kim to the authorities.
We reported the corruption and sourcing to Prince Albert. (Monaco police reporting was repeatedly obstructed by Monaco’s interior ministry and consequently never reached the Palace, which is why our intelligence service was invaluable to Albert—and should have remained so).
Thereafter, Thierry Lacoste and Claude Palmero conspired to disrupt the flow of intelligence to the Prince—and Albert ultimately chose to take the path of least resistance by allowing his lawyer and accountant to run roughshod through his principality.
Sadly, corruption in Monaco has grown steadily much worse since then.
Truth so often prevails. And indeed all these years later the rampant corruption of Messieurs Lacoste and Palmero was recently exposed by their own emails that got hacked and posted onto a website called Dossiers Les Rocher.
We are hearing whispers that those in Monaco who protest such corruption are imprisoned or committed to psych wards.
Which appears to suggest that the relationship between Prince Albert and Vladimir Putin is a match made not in heaven but in hell.
excellent stuff!