After less than a week’s vacation in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, I flew from New York-JFK to Nice, arriving M-Base (our Monaco safe house) at noon.
My first meeting, two hours later, was with President Stephane Valeri.
Next I met with Jean-Pierre Mangepain, Vice-President of the Alpes Maritime region. He claimed to have a source in Nice, an Armenian named Agop Dagleian, who had witnessed certain incidents while working as security chief to Adnan Houdrouge, whom Franck Biancheri green-lighted for investing into Monaco’s football team, ASM.
The issue—Franck Biancheri—was so time-sensitive for the Prince that I deigned to see Dagleian myself, as soon as possible. Mangepain also offered me a contact that had spent his career in various French special services—did I wish to meet him? Indeed, I did.
Next day I drove to the Alpes Maritime headquarters near Nice Airport to meet Mangepain and the man he proposed as an agent. To prove his druthers, this potential asset provided me with a seven-page “White Paper” on the Biancheri-Houdrouge relationship. According to this document, Biancheri had orchestrated Monegasque citizenship for Houdrouge, who was engaged in false invoicing, French Customs violations, arms trafficking and money laundering.
I code-named this gentleman LIDDY—after G. Gordon. (I looked to Watergate for most of my codenames.)
LIDDY also provided me with a report on a Monaco-based company called Sotrama, which he claimed (and which we validated) was a front for Russian arms dealing; that it laundered money; that President Putin’s cronies from St. Petersburg (and Putin himself) were behind Sotrama’s formation and were siphoning money for it to fill their own bank accounts.
The widow of Dmitry Skigin, the Russian who had fronted Sotrama, felt uncompensated after his death from cancer. When told Skigin’s ownership of the company was just a façade, with no inheritance due her, she ran to French police and began blabbing. LIDDY’s point was, if news of this got out it would embarrass Monaco.
Of course, we had to assume LIDDY was doubling i.e., reporting everything he could learn about our service back to the French intelligence services, so our dealings with him were strictly compartmented—and I ensured he was told only what I wanted the French to know about us.
Add this: An investigation conducted by Captain Yves Subraud’s confirmed that Franck Biancheri had been “borrowing” laborers from the Forum Grimaldi—the convention center managed by Biancheri’s wife, Sylvia—to work on their new villa at government expense.
“Franck Biancheri is Going to Kill You”
At seven in the morning on July 10th a massive storm settled over Monaco dispensing violent lightning bolts with ferocious thunder—a message from Prince Rainier’s ghost?
The storm cleared by 11:15 when the Prince arrived at M-Base. He had made his final decision: Franck Biancheri would not be appointed chef de cabinet. Moreover, Albert wanted our investigation of Biancheri continue with a view toward removing him as finance minister.
The person he had under consideration to become his chief-of-staff was Jean-Luc Allavena, a Monegasque living in Paris. Albert tasked me with vetting him.
When I sat down with Subraud and Gottlieb in SIGER’s offices, located discreetly around the corner from police headquarters, and sifted through the latest data on our Biancheri corruption investigation, Gottlieb looked at me and said—almost comically in his nonchalance— “Franck Biancheri is going to kill you.”
(Yeah, right, take a number—behind the Russian mob, the Italian mafia and the French Freemasons, not to mention the KGB and the Ku Klux Klan, both of which I had infiltrated.)
Much later, Alberto Manenti, operations director of SISMI (Italy’s foreign intelligence service), told me his service had been taking bets not on whether I’d make it through the year, but on who would eliminate me.
These were the odds:
Russian government: 20-1
Corsican terrorists (my ASM football enquiries): 15-1
French Freemasons: 10-1
Italian organized crime (“The Organization”): 5-1
Russian organized crime: 4-1
French government: 3-1
Monegasque establishment (“The Clan”): 2-1
It made me grateful for the existence of Albert’s friend Robert Munsch. Although Munsch was a relentless mooch, he was American, like me, and his name was Robert, like mine. And since he was more visible than I, yet known to be close to the Prince— “Albert’s best friend,” he liked to tell people—Munsch had become our official decoy, even if he did not know it himself.
“Choking on Their Champagne”
At his investiture ceremony, the Prince delivered a speech to his subjects assembled outside the Palace during which he reaffirmed the basic principle of our service to him:
I intend that ethics remain the backdrop for all the actions of the Monegasque authorities. Ethics are not divisible. Money and virtue must be combined permanently. The importance of Monaco’s financial market will require extreme vigilance to avoid the development of the type of financial activities that are not welcome in our country. To avoid such deviance, Monaco must function in harmony with all those organizations that share the same aim.
As he spoke, members of the Monegasque establishment—the usual suspects—huddled in a corner, muttering darkly. What could he possibly mean by this? Or as the (UK) Sunday Times put it, certain elements in Monaco’s society were “choking on their champagne.”
Because by now the Prince was extremely well informed to act on his promise.
But not just yet, he told me.
Albert had just endured a three-month mourning period. (Squandered, in my opinion.) He needed a chef de cabinet to assist him with implementation. And though the presence of a chef de cabinet was imperative to the day-to-day running of the Palace, the Prince designated the negotiation with Jean-Luc Allavena to such low-priority—way below building a volleyball court with sea sand at Roc Agel—that it took almost three months to seal the appointment and four additional months until Allavena was installed at the Palace. It was summer, the Prince told me, so he decided to spend these crucial summer months at Roc Agel, goofing off instead of taking control of his principality. Monaco was Albert’s to lose and words alone—at his investiture—would not be enough to win against the master exploiters still ensconced inside the Palace.
Next day at our safehouse I received POLO, my senior police asset, who reported that Gerard Brianti—cousin to Michel Pastor—received a kickback from every football player contracted to play for Monaco’s team. This had come to his attention through a French investigation of an individual named Fabien Pivateau, who had come up against Brianti as a corrupt rival footballers’ agent, connected to Corsican nationalists.
I also received intelligence on Erminio Giraudi, a meatpacking mobster from Italy who had opened Le Beefbar in Fontvieille and allegedly cut Franck Biancheri a secret ten percent stake for speedy approval. Giraudi did not manage to get his application for Monegasque citizenship pushed through while Prince Rainier was on his deathbed so he was now pestering Prince Albert for nationality.
The chief prosecutor of Milan had been on Giraudi’s trail until blocked by Monaco’s (former) chief prosecutor Gaston Carrasco, who later became Giraudi’s personal lawyer. Years later, the Italians had still not given up investigating Giraudi for money laundering and tax evasion. Giraudi was overheard telling the Italian consul to Monaco, “I don’t give a shit about you—I’m going to be Monegasque!”
“I Have Prince Albert in my Pocket”
At five o’clock sharp I arrived on the seafront in Nice for a secret rendezvous with Agop Dagleian in a room I’d booked at Le Meridien Hotel. I brought Captain Yves Subraud with me to witness this meeting and help me evaluate Dagleian and his story.
We waited in room 819, where LIDDY knocked the door at six o’clock precisely, Dagleian beside him.
Dagleian told us he had been security chief to Adnan Houdrouge for five years, 1998-2003, that he personally witnessed Houdrouge hand Sylvia Biancheri (Franck’s wife) an envelope stuffed with cash for a shopping spree in St. Tropez. Dagleian was now persona non grata in Monaco, he said, and he believed Franck Biancheri had him chased out because he knew too much.
Two years earlier, Dagleian told us, Houdrouge had given three million euros to Franck Biancheri on the assumption that these funds would be delivered to Prince Albert —a bribe for permitting Houdrouge to invest in Monaco’s soccer team.
I found it hard to believe that Albert would request or receive a bribe as I’d never noticed anything in his character that suggested greed for money or material possessions. If Dagleian’s account was correct, I suspected Biancheri told Houdrouge he needed to pay three million euros to the Prince but kept the money for himself. From that time thereafter, Dagleian heard Houdrouge tell various associates, “I have Prince Albert in my pocket” and “I have Prince Albert by the balls.”
Dagleian told us that Houdrouge was under investigation by the French authorities for false invoicing of merchandise for trade with African countries and tax evasion. Furthermore, said Dagleian, Houdrouge was using sports merchandise as a cover for illegal arms trafficking, and he identified the middleman as Ricco Dhan, a Greek- Lebanese-Egyptian. Dagleian further told us Houdrouge laundered cash from Africa through Italy and Nice (by train) for deposit in Monaco— “One hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand euros twice a week.”
Dagleian told us that Houdrouge had paid Franck Biancheri’s air and hotel bills on a regular basis, including a recent vacation in Madagascar.
After Dagleian departed with LIDDY, Subraud and I discussed his credibility. There was a French bias, Subraud told me, to regard any Armenian as a crook. But Dagleian passed muster for him. His eye and body language—and depth of detail—suggested credibility to us both.
The Prince and I were due to meet again for a roundup of post-investiture intelligence, including my meeting with Dagleian. But he failed to appear at M-Base as scheduled. When we spoke by phone a few days later he apologized and promised a three-hour lunch at Roc Agel on August 10th to catch up. I told Albert I’d enjoyed his investiture speech, especially the part about ethics and a crackdown on money laundering. He told me he meant it.
“Knowledge is Never Too Dear”
My “three-hour lunch” with Prince Albert at Roc Agel turned into a fiasco and a huge disappointment. We had many important, sensitive matters to discuss, but the Prince had invited a young frolicking couple along. (“Unavoidable,” he told me.)
Thus, what should have been a strategic session was reduced to trivial chitchat. Even after a useless two-hour lunch by the pool shifted to the main house, the Prince still found it difficult to excuse himself from his playmates.
When finally I insisted we speak in private, Albert petulantly sat his guests in front of a television set and found us a room as somber as his mood for being pressed to talk business—the sole reason for my presence.
“Where do you stand with Jean-Luc Allavena?” I asked.
“Yeah, I want him as chef de cabinet,” the Prince replied.
This was good news—except that Allavena had, for a whole week, been on pins and needles expecting Albert’s call, as promised, to resolve a compensation issue. Precious time had been lost—was still being lost without a chef de cabinet—and it was the Prince, not Allavena, who was holding up the process.
I conveyed our intelligence from Agop Dagleian on Biancheri and Houdrouge.
Albert confirmed, as I suspected, he had not received three million euros from Houdrouge via Biancheri.
Again, I urged the Prince to conduct a zero-based review of all ministers and choose his own. He was Sovereign, not his father’s ghost. I again pointed out that the status quo was not okay; that he needed to send a message to his government and his subjects, and to France, that he meant business. If he appointed new ministers and ordered them to crack down on money laundering, they would do this; the pack of ministers still in position would not. I suggested we make examples of three money launderers—after all, we had at least a dozen from which to choose.
I made my case for additional funding. Our costs had risen: Our safe house (M-Base), operational security, paid assets, travel expenses… Although we worked 24/7, my deputy and I paid ourselves a pittance, preferring to pour everything we could into growing the service. We needed at least 25 percent more to operate, nothing extra for ourselves. The prince demurred; said he’d think about it.
I pointed out that knowledge is power; that, as Sovereign, he needed the best intelligence money could buy to ensure that he could make the wisest decisions. With our spy-net of assets and informants plus liaison relationships, built over three years on a shoestring, he now had a small albeit highly efficient intelligence service at his disposal—one that was truly secret and 100 percent loyal to him without any conflicts of interest.
Prince Albert’s disinterest that day, in view of all we had accomplished, left me somewhat demoralized. I understood how Sir Francis Walsingham, the father of modern-day spying, must have felt when Queen Elizabeth I neglected to provide the badly needed funding for the intelligence service he had created at her command. Walsingham ended up bankrupting himself in the belief that “knowledge is never too dear.”
It was difficult for monarchs, perhaps leaders in general, to appreciate the cost of collecting and assessing intelligence, causing Walsingham to write, “Spy chiefs are never appreciated.”
(Later, when I mentioned to one of the Prince’s close friends that my meeting with Albert was disappointing, he said that my presence had probably interrupted a sexual escapade. “It’s all about sex for him—last night it was Russian prostitutes at Michael Smurfit’s villa in Villefranche—twins, I think.” He added that the Prince was “taking August easy—unwinding from pressure of the last five months.” Which meant we were five months behind getting the Prince’s leadership established. It seemed to many, including me, he was hiding out. Said his friend: “He runs away from problems and avoids confrontation. And thinks with his dick.”)
The Prince told me he would that evening attend a party at Oscar Wyatt’s villa on Cap Ferrat. It did not matter that Wyatt (as I pointed out to him earlier) was dirty, dirty, dirty: trading in embargoed oil, arms trafficking, money laundering… as one intelligence officer in a friendly service told me, “You name it, Wyatt’s doing it.”
President Stephane Valeri phoned me mid-evening, concerned that the Prince had made no announcements about anything, not least his appointment of a chef de cabinet. “The people are waiting,” he whined.
I reassured him an announcement was imminent. But, secretly, I was as disgusted as he.
Meantime, I was beginning to feel like a yo-yo, hurtled by EasyJet across the English Channel and France, sometimes twice weekly.
My first meeting always upon arrival (late afternoon) was with police Captain Yves Subraud—soon, a ritual. He provided a police file (or fiche) I had requested on Oleg Kim, a wealthy Russian who lived in nearby Cap Martin. The Monaco connection: Kim’s daughter, Olga Kim, was resident in Monaco; through her, Oleg laundered money through Monaco banks.
Next, I dispatched these names and vital statistics to other intelligence services for running traces—also by now a ritual.