After over a year of doing foreign intelligence for Prince Albert of Monaco, our attention turned, at Albert’s request, to domestic intelligence, to Monaco’s government, which would soon be his to reshape.
It had not been part of our original brief to focus on internal politics and corruption, which naturally belonged to the realm of law enforcement. But as the Prince’s eyes and ears, our intelligence service was given the requirement to assess who should Albert trust to pursue his professed new program of cleaning up his principality from the corruption that had been all too rampant.
By September of 2004, Prince Rainier III had taken a “downhill change” and the end was said to be “hastening.” Sixty cigarettes a day for most of his life had taken a toll on his lungs and heart—and now he was failing mentally if unwilling to step aside.
Decisions were being made by a troika comprised of Rainier’s personal secretary Madame Siri, his chef de cabinet (chief of staff) Raymond Biancheri and the Palace accountant, Claude Palmero—decisions that best served the troika. They were grooming Raymond’s son, Franck Biancheri the finance minister, to be Prince Albert’s chef de cabinet and for ensuring that the (corrupt) status quo be perpetuated. Apparently, the younger Biancheri had been posturing himself around town as “Prince Rainier IV.” Everyone, including the Prince and Biancheri, believed he would be chosen by Albert to run day-to-day activities at the Palace and implement the Prince’s program.
On 6 April 2005 Rainier passed away and his heir became Prince Albert II of Monaco.
Having created an intelligence apparatus 33 months before, the Prince began his reign well informed about what was going on inside Monaco. He already knew the identities of those who gave the principality a bad name in the eyes of intelligence community, those responsible for Monaco’s inclusion on the blacklist maintained by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development in Brussels.
It was now down to Albert to do something about it.
The good guys are mourning, I scribbled into my leather journal after strolling through tables and tables of bouquets in front of the Palace. But the bad guys aren’t slowing down—they’re working double-time. So we need to work triple time.
Monegasque law 890, Article 4-3, modified by law 23/12/1992, provides for a “penalty of ten to twenty years for any transfer through one’s own account or someone else’s account of funds or titles from abroad into the principality, or vice versa, that come directly or indirectly from financial recycling operations.”
The prince already knew the identities of persons contravening this anti-money laundering statute.
Under these new circumstances, I flew to Washington D.C. for deep consultations-of- the-veiled-kind with all the usual suspects.
It was Jerry G, a former CIA station chief and part of our DC spy-net, who asked me a very pertinent question: “Does Albert want to run Monaco or does he want Monaco to run him?”
At the time, I thought this to be impertinent. I truly believed the Prince wanted to run Monaco, not the other way around.
“Mr. Ten Percent”
About halfway through a three-month mourning period, the Prince and I met for a drink by the Palace swimming pool, part of a garden oasis replete with cooing caged white pigeons.
The Prince was in a quandary. He was expected by Monaco’s establishment to appoint Franck Biancheri to the top job but was bothered by the finance minister’s nickname: “Mr. Ten Percent”—derived from kickbacks Biancheri raked in for approving select projects in his position as finance minister.
The prince requested I accelerate our investigation into Biancheri.
We needed a contact point within Monaco’s police department to assist us in this matter. The prince suggested Jean-Raymond Gottlieb, whom he telephoned on the spot with this instruction: “Eringer will call, give him anything he asks.”
At ten o’clock next morning, I met with Gottlieb, who was part of SIGER, Monaco’s three-officer political unit. We had a favorable first meeting, established a good rapport and agreed to share intelligence.
Protocol dictated that Gottlieb could not contact the Prince directly, even though he had fathered Princess Stephanie’s eldest daughter, Camille, so he delighted in my arrangement. Gottlieb had become convinced that others in the chain of command filtered intelligence to suit their own agendas and that nothing of significance from his unit ever reached the prince.
Effective immediately, we joined forces on the investigation into Franck Biancheri’s corrupt activities.
Afterwards, I hosted a meeting of the Prince’s long-time friends—Mike P, Francesco B, and Jean-Marc G—to hear their own concerns about corruption. They resolved to bring Stephane Valeri, President of the Conseil Nationale, to M-Base to voice his concerns directly to me.
Not two hours later, Monaco’s highest elected official appeared on my doorstep.
President Valeri explained that he’d lunched with Franck Biancheri two weeks before, at which he had offered the finance minister an opportunity to admit his mistakes. Biancheri rebuffed him. So, in return Valeri categorically revealed to me the muck he had raked on his fellow Monegasque. As he prepared to leave M-Base, Valeri held his hands in prayer and implored of me, “Please save my country.”
I would have been complimented. Except I knew what Valeri really meant: Please help me quash my political enemies.
Because this is what was really going on: National Assembly President Stephan Valeri and Franck Biancheri had been digging dirt on one another for some time as natural competitors for power and influence within the principality. Both were corrupt; each possessed muck on the other. Valeri was first to throw some after Biancheri ignored a proposal from a group Valeri backed that desired to invest $50 million dollars into ASM, Monaco’s football team.
Moreover, Valeri was trying to create a backchannel to the Prince, circumventing normal protocol, through one of Albert’s closest personal friends.
Furthermore, we knew that Valeri had allowed himself to be cultivated by a Monaco-based Russian named Alexey Fedorichev, which we determined to be a counterintelligence issue.
That evening I met again with Jean-Raymond Gottlieb. He brought with him his SIGER unit partner, Yves Subraud, a captain with 28 years on Monaco’s police force. Subraud had special responsibility for monitoring the Islamic fundamentalist community in and around the principality. He echoed Gottlieb’s pleasure about having a direct route to the Prince through our special service.
“Nothing has been getting through,” Subraud sighed. “Thank God someone can now get the message across.”
Added Gottlieb: “Tomorrow we go to work for you.”
Zero-based Review
On my next trip to Monaco two weeks later, Prince Albert and I faced one another in a pair of wing chairs beneath a high ceiling and picture window looking from the Palace toward the Tete de Chien.
“There is too much smoke to appoint Franck Biancheri chef de cabinet,” I told him. “And probably grounds to remove him as finance minister.”
I worked my way through several alleged transgressions, ranging from conflicts of interests to secret kickbacks to fraud.
The prince then confided something he claimed he had not told another soul: He had decided to pass on Biancheri and appoint someone else. He said he wanted all the ammunition we could muster; that he intended to announce his intentions on July 13, the day after his investiture, and he anticipated an onslaught of indignation from Biancheri and his allies in the government.
I reemphasized the importance of making the right personnel decisions up front, to make a bold statement that the corrupt status quo is no longer acceptable; that the Prince has firmly taken control of his principality. I suggested a zero-based review, whereby ministers are required to offer their resignations while their status and records are put to review by the new chef de cabinet.
The important thing, I advised, was for the Prince to flex his muscles and exert power, not be frightened of making dramatic decisions against the status quo. The less power the Prince exerted, I counseled, the more others would exert theirs and chip away at his authority.
With hindsight, it was probably a mistake for the intelligence apparatus I had created to delve into internal corruption. It belonged within the purview of law enforcement, not intelligence. But as the Prince himself pointed out to me: a) The police had not been doing its job properly, b) he did not trust the police, and c) whatever police reports were issued to the interior ministry were either filtered or blocked entirely from reaching the Palace.
Morale, meanwhile, within the police force was at an all-time low, with many in its ranks complaining about their alcoholic chief.
Little wonder Gottlieb and Subraud were thrilled by the relationship we had just created.