This working day began at 7:30 with a visit from Palace chef-de-Cabinet Jean-Luc Allavena (JLA)
I possessed information from a reliable source that Thierry Lacoste had revamped his concept of creating a “kitchen cabinet,” the objective of which would be to wield influence from behind-the-scenes, by those who maintained serious conflicts of interest and were trying to get-rich-quick in Monaco.
“We don’t need a kitchen cabinet,” said a bemused JLA. “We’ve got a real one. I’ll tell the Prince that I’ll leave if a kitchen cabinet is created.”
“May they at least form a bathroom cabinet?” I joked. (You had to have a sense of humor to weed through this nonsense.)
Lacoste had just attempted to launch a “think-tank conference” in Monaco and sent the Palace an invoice of 150,000 euros to foot the cost. JLA intended to speak to Lacoste later in the day, void the invoice and quash his plan for a “think-tank.”
More important, JLA wanted from me an update on Philippe Narmino.
We were still collecting intelligence “by the hour,” I told JLA. We wanted as much as we could get before committing our results to a written report.
The pressure to appoint Philippe Narmino chief of judicial services was not coming from “the French,” as the Prince thought, but from GLNF, the Freemason lodge—according to POLO, a senior Mason in our service. Narmino was a GLNF Freemason. In 1999, a French magistrate named Davust was seconded to Monaco to direct the judicial service. Davust had been transferred to Paris in 2003 to take charge of judicial personnel. Ever since, Davust, a GLNF brother Mason, had been pushing hard for Narmino to be placed in his old Monaco job.
The Prince arrived at M-Base mid-afternoon, with JLA at his heels. By this time, it felt like Monaco was being run from our safe house. In the past four days within its walls we had agreed to oust the corrupt finance minister, JLA and I were trying hard to prevent a corrupt senior judge from getting the top job at justice, we had reorganized—on paper—the police intelligence unit, staved off the minister of state from creating his own intelligence service—and relegated a would-have-been kitchen cabinet to the bathroom.
Now, with the three of us again assembled in M-Base (cramped around a tiny kitchen table because of electrical works going on in the living room), I made an impassioned plea for the Prince to hold off appointing Narmino chief of judicial services.
Albert’s concern: if not Narmino, who else?
JLA had the answer: Request from France an interim magistrate to fill the position for two years while we further assessed the situation. If Narmino came out clean, he could still get the job, JLA reasoned, but if the Prince gave Narmino the job now, it would be very difficult to remove him later. That got my vote, with this provision: Ensure the French don’t send a Freemason.
Much earlier in my tenure, I offered the Prince this advice: If in doubt, don’t. Now I had an addendum: if someone—anyone—presses you for an immediate decision, it’s no. Only if they’re prepared to wait for a considered answer might it be yes.
Next, I ascended the Rock, to the chambers of the Conseil Nationale, for a sit-down with President Stephane Valeri in his office. Proust had been in just before me to gripe about JLA.
“He wants to be the Number Two,” Proust had blubbered to Valeri. “I am Number Two. I make decisions, not JLA.”
In fact, Proust was mistaken. Monaco is an absolute monarchy, and its constitution, which JLA read thoroughly while preparing for his job, clearly states that the Palace, not the government, rules the principality; the government exists to execute the wishes of the Palace.
Unfortunately, during the last five years of Prince Rainier’s reign the government had been chipping away at this power and had begun, unconstitutionally, taking it unto itself. It was JLA’s job to bring power back to the Palace, where it rightfully belonged.
“JLA is treating me like a kid,” Valeri quoted Proust as having said. “If he continues, I will leave.”
As I later said to the Prince, there is only one response for anyone threatening to leave: May I hand you your coat?
Valeri was generally impressed by JLA’s first few weeks on the job. “The Cabinet used to be a cluster of old men of no consequence,” he told me. “JLA has shaped it into a formidable power.” It also put Valeri on edge; power was something he coveted for himself.
Proust had enjoyed seven months without an effective chef de cabinet to shield the Prince from the government. It was Albert’s own fault for delaying… procrastinating… negotiating—and wasting precious time to firmly establish his rule.
Proust had gotten used to life without JLA, dealing directly with a Sovereign who was spread thin, easily distracted due to his being focused mostly on his social life—and therefore easy to manipulate. With JLA it was another story. Now Proust was up against a formidable figure whose agenda was simple: Make the Prince appreciate his own power and assist him in the execution of such power with objectivity, focus, intelligence and the high ethical stance the Prince had already promised to his subjects and to the world.
That was why JLA had taken the job. And that was also why I, three-and-a-half years earlier, had signed on.
Proust’s perception of the situation was that JLA was trying to make decisions in the Prince’s name. He was not. The reality was this: The Prince finally had a shield so that Proust and others could not talk him out of what he wanted.
And this created another man with another knife.
JLA telephoned me late that evening after speaking with the Prince. He told me Albert was shocked that Thierry Lacoste and his Paris clique would try to form a kitchen cabinet.
I didn’t see anything shocking about it; I fully expected them to try.
As for Proust, JLA was already aware of the minister of state’s disposition toward him. “At Tuesday’s meeting he acted like a child,” said JLA.
The problem was this: Every weekend JLA would fly home to his family in Paris. And every weekend the knives would come out and cut away at all he had accomplished during the week. On this very evening, the Prince had dined with Proust who, again, tried to drive a wedge between the Prince and his new chef de cabinet.
The Narmino Report
As 2006 began, I returned to London dispirited if focused on the Narmino Report. I returned to Monaco on January 5th, report in hand.
I set out on foot for a 9:15 meeting with JLA at the Palace and saw his office for the first time. (We normally met at M-Base to preserve my invisible status.) This space was rather different from JLA’s Lagardere office in Paris—about one-fifth the size. As for breakfast: one bottle of Evian water, for which the Palace charged him three euros.
I presented my report on Philippe Narmino; JLA read it voraciously as I sat with him:
People talk in Monaco. Gossip runs rampant. There is no doubt that rumormongering is the principality’s national pastime. Throw in job jostling, backstabbing, and personal agendas and one has a prescription for misinformation, disinformation and outright lies.
But there is a difference between idle or deceptive chatter in bars or hairdressing saloons and reports produced by trained professional police intelligence officers. (The former is counter-productive but the latter crucial for informed decision-making.)
While it is true that intelligence is only as good as the sources who provide it, it is also true that professional intelligence officers give great care to assessing both the information they receive and the credibility of the sources from whom they receive it. When the system occasionally goes wrong (i.e., WMD in Iraq), it is because governments and politicians sometimes select what they wish to hear or interpret ambiguous reporting their own way. Good intelligence is not based on hearing a rumor from one source, writing it down and reporting it to the decision-maker. Good intelligence is an objective process that takes many weeks or months of collection from multiple sources, followed by careful analysis.
Which brings us to the case of Philippe Narmino.
While we realize a decision must be made imminently on whether or not to appoint Narmino to a very senior government job, our investigation of him remains incomplete. Unanswered questions persist. If Narmino has engaged in corrupt practices, and if indeed there are special interests that believe they have Narmino in their pocket, his appointment as head of Monaco’s judicial service will endanger the principality and the reign of Prince Albert II.
One point has become very clear through our investigation of Narmino: the officers of SIGER are frightened of the harm Narmino can cause to their careers. This has hampered our investigation from the beginning. In addition, we are investigating others who are close to Narmino and who believe that he is their “get-out-of-jail-free” card. Hence, whether Narmino is appointed or not, SIGER should be given insulation to investigate government officials without fear of retribution.
Thus followed a devastating catalog of impropriety, conflict of interest, grand theft and fraud.
JLA summoned Claude Palmero, the Palace accountant, to join us in his office for a discussion of this report. Palmero read the report in front of me. When he came upon the phrase “Get-out-of-jail-free card,” he nodded excitedly. “Yes, I have seen this! Maruani [Narmino’s special friend] got out of jail free when he was implicated in the Hobbs-Melville scandal!” (Palmero should talk. He was the Hobbs-Melville accountant!)
About Prince Rainier, Palmero continued: “He wasn’t even a shadow of himself during the last two-to-three years. He wasn’t there. He could not even discuss his own personal affairs. He signed whatever Madame Siri [his personal secretary, some say mistress through whom he sired an illegitimate son] put before his eyes.”
This was the period when those around Rainier, who exploited his weakness, his ill health and his mental incapacity and ran rampant with awards and Monegasque passports and job appointments and future job promises.
And where was the Hereditary Prince Albert during that time?
The courtesans kept him busy, in the dark and on the road, where he happily traveled the world, not responsible for substantive decisions in Monaco—and irresponsible in his behavior, enticed by the likes of Robert Munsch and others to behave like a college freshman well into his forties.
JLA had already spoken with President Chirac’s chef de cabinet and prepared the French for the possibility that Narmino would not get the job, could they propose a suitable replacement?
But JLA phoned late that evening to tell me the Prince was inclined to proceed with the Narmino appointment pending a meeting with me at the weekend so I could, again, make my case. Said JLA sardonically, “He [Narmino] hasn’t killed anyone.”
The Prince arrived at M-Base at 7:30 next evening and we talked, one-on-one, for two-and-a-half hours over martinis and sandwiches.
We began with Narmino, evidence versus doubt: If Narmino was under criminal investigation, I reasoned, we would of course need hard evidence to arrest and convict him. But doubt about his honesty was enough to preclude appointment to a job. And not just any job, but a top job as chief of judicial services, a service based upon honesty and integrity.
We had a hell of a lot of doubt about Narmino’s honesty and his integrity. By not appointing him, I argued, the Prince risked a few days political flack. But such an appointment could potentially haunt his reign for many years.
(Turns out I was absolutely correct: Many years later, when Narmino was forced to resign in disgrace due to public exposure of his ongoing corruption, it cast a dark shadow over Albert’s reign that continues to the present.)
“You are on a roll,” I counseled, “and building momentum. Please don’t brake now.”
“But it’s something my father started,” the Prince countered.
“It wasn’t your father,” I replied. “It was the people around him—the crowd that needs to be cleaned out.”
I added that the French wouldn’t care; that they would applaud the Prince’s strength and willingness to be his own man instead of operating in the shadow of a corpse. As for the Prince’s subjects in Monaco, not appointing Narmino would send shockwaves, indeed—but they would be positive shockwaves, undoing what those around Rainier had conspired to achieve after his death.
When I concluded my impassioned plea, the Prince told me he was inclined not to appoint Narmino. But if he chose to go ahead with the appointment—I made him promise, and he did—I would have two weeks to find a smoking gun.
I connected with JLA early next afternoon to brief him on my extensive meeting with the Prince: Doubt about Narmino should be enough to preclude appointing Narmino, but if Albert changed his mind I’d have two weeks to scramble and muster.
JLA asked me, “Should Narmino be removed from his job [as judge]?”
“In my opinion, yes,” I said. “But for that we should have hard evidence.”
Next day JLA phoned to inform me that the Prince, again, leaned in favor of appointing Narmino. This seemed to fit with what I’d heard about Albert: He went along with whoever was last in his presence. JLA gave me nine days to produce a smoking gun.
Two days later, another call from JLA: The Prince was anxious to sign the Narmino appointment, his two-week promise to me notwithstanding. JLA was doing his best to stave it off.
Two days after that, Albert phoned me to say that the only thing in our Narmino report that concerned him was the misappropriation of the Miro painting from Monaco Red Cross. He told me he did not care about the Brianti/Ageprim valuation scam, the expensive gifts or the lies he had told JLA about about his personal life, which (without going into sordid details), to my thinking opened him to potential blackmail.
“Gifts have been a way of life in Monaco,” said the Prince, as if he’d been re-programmed since our last marathon meeting, by whomever he’d last seen.
In any case, it was that way of life that Albert had pledged to change.
The Prince signed Narmino’s appointment that day, Friday, the 13th (of January)—and, as time would prove, it was most certainly a bad luck decision.
“We move on,” JLA told me, unhappy but determined to keep up the good fight on so many fronts around us.
JLA invited me to the Palace to join him and the Prince in the turreted office that once belonged to Princess Grace. Albert was extremely agitated, unable to find the words he wished to say. Word juxtaposition never came easy to him, a flaw exacerbated by his occasional stutter, especially when he was stressed. Again, we discussed Narmino. Albert did not want to hear my message and, again, fixated on the stolen Red Cross painting, to the exclusion of all else. I mentioned a Swiss account Narmino had hidden behind a nominee—new intelligence from POLO.
“That’s not against the law,” Albert snapped.
True. But the only reason for a Monegasque to hide money, since there is no income tax in Monaco, is if the money is dirty.
Next morning the Prince spent an hour at M-Base, greeting me with, “You, again,” wary as he was of bad news.
I’d told Albert at the beginning he’d tire of seeing my face because I would tell him only the truth, and the truth was most often (in Monaco, anyway) not only a rare commodity but unpalatable. He’d shrugged it off back then and had shrugged off my reminders since. But I knew the truth was wearing on him.