Extract:
The malice at the palace has reached Defcon 1.
A scandal involving the most powerful people in the postage stamp-sized principality of Monaco, including Prince Albert, his one-time trusted “Gang of 4,” a shrewd real estate developer and now Princess Charlene — has taken a turn for the worse.
The Grimaldi family’s once-mighty and respected accountant, Claude Palmero, was unceremoniously ousted last year from his perch at the pink palace high above the Mediterranean, after 22 years of service to Albert.
My comment: The now disgraced Claude Palmero was ousted (fired and escorted to his car by Palace carabinieri) for very good reason. In fact, Palmero should have been fired as far back as 2006 for his corrupt activities and dirty deals.
The resulting four-part series — with sinister headlines like “The Fall of the Man Who Knew Too Much” — shines an embarrassing light on 65-year-old Prince Albert’s professional and personal foibles. Among them are his demand for a second, secret bachelor apartment after his 2011 marriage to former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock and the allocation of up to $650,000 annually in “special funds” for “secret missions” and “parallel activities.”
My comment: Albert’s “professional and personal foibles” have been known by many for years. It took the media much too long to catch on and report. I suppose they needed an implosion within Monaco and all the finger-pointing that resulted.
Last spring after a mysterious online site called “Les Dossiers du Rocher” began exposing what it claims are the corrupt secrets of Albert’s inner circle. The accusations include money laundering.
My comment: These dossiers were mostly emails between the culprits, hence, they were caught red-handed and the corrupt dirty deals that assured themselves secret payoffs were exposed for all to see. The two biggest culprits are ex-Palace accountant Claude Palmero and Albert’s ex-personal lawyer Thierry Lacoste—now disgraced and banished from Monaco’s royal court.
"This is all the final proof that the emperor has no clothes,” said Robert Eringer, who worked for Albert as an intelligence adviser from 2002 to 2007 in Monaco. He added that he warned the prince about Palmero, Lacoste and the others not looking out for his best interests way back then.
My comment: An understatement. After Prince Albert appointed the very corrupt Philippe Narmino to be his Justice Minister on Friday the 13th of January 2006, I warned him that if he continued down such a path he would put his reign into serious jeopardy. (Albert knew Narmino was corrupt but appointed him anyway, despite protest from me and Jean-Luc Allavena, the Prince’s chief of staff.)
Of course, Albert continued deeper on down the path of least resistance. By the end of 2006, the situation had become both ridiculous and untenable. In late October, Palmero and Lacoste pushed Albert to dismiss his chief of staff because Allavena was standing in the way of their corrupt activities. Then in December, without Albert’s authorization, Lacoste and Palmero conspired to oust me as Albert’s intelligence chief after I uncovered evidence, along with members of Monaco’s police force, that they were involved in rigging a huge construction project because of their secret stakes with one of the bidders.
Thereafter, it became Palmero’s Walter Mitty fantasy to conduct investigations for Albert, hardly the role of a bean-counter. Of course, the targets of Palmero’s investigations were his own enemies within Monaco!
In September 2017, Philippe Narmino was forced to resign as Justice Minister in disgrace after Le Monde exposed his corruption.
And in mid-2023 the truth finally caught up with Palmero and Lacoste.
Everyone who doubted what I reported—starting in 2008—about Prince Albert, Narmino, Palmero and Lacoste are now in no doubt that every word I wrote about them was true and that the charge of defamation they leveled against me was false.
“Albert’s to blame for the soup he finds himself in now,” says Eringer. “Monaco’s various factions are at war all the time. Palmero was deeply entrenched in the factional warfare. What I was doing for Albert was being the honest broker pointing out these warring factions. I looked at them as cancer cells, and I think I was the first one to blow the whistle on Palmero. Albert has a hard time with confrontation. He runs away from it.”
Bottom line: Albert’s reign is now a horrible mess and his legacy in ruins.
Get em