Extract:
Patrice Pastor commands the sprawling Groupe Pastor property empire, which was built more than a century ago by his Italian great-grandfather Jean-Baptiste Pastor (born Giovanni Battista Pastor), who arrived in Monaco in the 1880s as an orphaned stonemason. Later, Patrice’s father Victor was Monaco’s de facto developer in chief, working with the Grimaldis to build the modern principality.“For decades the Pastor family was known as the prince’s builder,” says Robert Eringer, an American writer and private investigator who ran an intelligence service for Prince Albert for the first two years of his rule, starting in 2005. “They had a virtual monopoly, and they enjoyed that.”
My comment: Disgraced ex-Palace accountant Claude Palmero and Thierry Lacoste, disgraced ex-personal lawyer to Prince Albert, seem to believe that Patrice Pastor was behind Dossiers de Rocher, which exposed the widespread corruption of Palmero and Lacoste.
Extract:
Lacoste hired a private security company employing former French secret service agents. It reportedly confirmed that Lacoste’s law offices had been hacked and emails spanning a decade stolen. “I don’t know who was behind the [site], but I do know that it was quite an operation and it must have been very expensive,” Eringer says. “Whoever was behind it had money or had access to money.” Lacoste tells me his investigations have put the estimated cost of the operation at between $5 million and $10 million.
As efforts to identify the Raven stalled, the affair began to strain Prince Albert’s defense of his men. Initially the only hint of reproach had been the suggestion that Lacoste should not have taken on clients in Monaco aside from the prince, because, though legal, it invited speculation about conflicts of interest.
My comment: Ya think?
Or, as reporter Simon Osborne quoted me…
Eringer spies a familiar pattern in the prince’s actions: naïveté followed by self-preservation. “He goes to the media and tries to put a spin on it and say it’s all untrue,” he says. “But when that didn’t work and he realized that there could be a lot of damage to his reputation, that’s the time that he finally flung them away.”
Extract:
Palmero was reportedly given a military escort as he was expelled from the palace. Soon, as detailed in Le Monde, his homes and offices, alongside those of the other three men, were being raided by the police as part of an investigation into corruption allegations.
My comment: Extremely well deserved. Palmero is a scoundrel and a charlatan.
Extract:
At the time of writing, the Dossiers site is no longer online; it is viewable only via online archive services, but its impact is still making waves in Monaco as multiple investigations and legal cases continue. It’s far from clear how the saga will end. One thing that is clear: the sense that the whole affair has damaged Prince Albert’s standing, as well as his promise to be a modernizing prince who would shed the principality’s decades-old reputation for shady dealings and court intrigue.