On Retainer to Prince Albert of Monaco
April 2006
Minister of State Jean-Paul Proust leaked a false
story to the Nice-Matin newspaper
that the Prince had refused to accept Franck Biancheri’s resignation, in a bid to stave off the finance minister's removal.
Unfortunately, it had the effect of frightening our informants, who
could not understand the Machiavellian dynamics and use of disinformation at
play.
As my finance ministry agent HUNT put it: “People on the street are
extremely confused, can make no sense of what’s going on.”
Public opinion was going against the Prince for his waffling and not making his program clear.
Consequently, Monegasques who previously bayed for Biancheri’s blood now began to feel
sorry for him due to his position in
the middle of this tug of war.
One
of the Prince’s first acts as Sovereign was to decree that the flag always fly
above the Palace in daylight, even when he was not present within the principality, a departure from
Rainier’s policy, who had it removed when he was away.
Word reached me that Monegasques perceived
this new measure as a symbol of avoidance; it seemed to them a device to
conceal the Prince’s frequent absences from the country he was supposed to be governing.
As
one of my spies put it: “He’s avoiding
us. And now he thinks he’s fooling us.”
It
was clear little could be done until the fundamentals were right.
And the main wrong fundamental was the
minister of state.
Proust had to be
replaced with someone new who, as prime
minister, would execute the Prince’s program; someone who understood that the
Palace was in charge of Monaco’s destiny, not the government—and respect that it
is the function of the government to put the Prince’s plan into place.
I
had no doubt about this, having heard from a spy within Proust’s camp that a)
Proust did not care what the Palace wanted to do b) could care less about
anything JLA instructed him to do and c) subscribed to a French imperialistic
view of Monaco: it’s a small state—who
do they think they are?
Only
with a new minister of state, I was certain, could we move forward against
the undesirables.
When
I spoke with the Prince by phone at ten past nine on the evening of March 30th,
I replayed DST chief Pierre de Bousquet’s question: “Why doesn’t the Prince choose his own minister of state?”
One of the Prince’s concerns had been, “What
would the French think?”
Now we
knew.
But
the Prince replied: “Out of respect for
my father.”
“It
wasn’t your father,” I said. “The people
around your father chose Proust—and now they’re glad they did.”
(I don't know if anyone spoke to the Prince as honestly, and bluntly, as I did. Pity, because he could have used more of that.)
I finally understood, all these many months later, that “what will the French
think?” and “out of respect for my
father” was simply code for: I don’t
have it in me to take control.
LIDDY
tried to put it into perspective when I met him in M-Base on April 6th.
He told me the French believed Biancheri and
Narmino had something incriminating on the Prince. It otherwise made no sense to them that Biancheri was still finance
minister and Narmino had become justice minister.
With
regard to Narmino, LIDDY reported that huge amounts of money had been
transferred from the Balkans (Sarajevo and Zagreb) through Barclays Bank in
Monaco and back to the Balkans, managed by Narmino and his wife.
LIDDY had counted 86 such
transactions—faxes—signed by Narmino’s wife using her maiden name, Christine
Giudici.
I dreamt I was in Reading, Pennsylvania,
woke up certain I was in London, and was absolutely astonished to discover
myself in bed at M-Base.
(When
I phoned Clair George and he said, “I can’t keep up with you,” I
replied, “I can’t keep up with myself.”)
April
7th began with a coffee social in M-Base for a banking contingent
from Liechtenstein, including the chief of their Financial Intelligence Unit (the closest thing they had to an intelligence service), Rene Brulhart, who at once felt
like an old friend.
We ascended the
steps of The Rock and assembled by 9:45 in a Palace conference room, with JLA
masterfully presiding.
Liechtenstein
presented their banking model and confirmed for us that Monaco’s SICCFIN “had
no teeth.”
Afterwards I met JLA in his
office for a private meeting.
Proust: “He has betrayed the Prince,” said JLA. “His pronouncements about government changes
[to the media] run contrary to what he has been told, especially with regard to
Franck Biancheri.”
SIGER: JLA would lunch with Interior Minister Paul
Masseron that day and instruct him to get on with the restructuring SIGER around Proust.
After
lunching with the Liechtenstein group, I met privately with Rene Brulhart and laid out
my vision for an association of intelligence services from Micro-European
countries: Monaco, Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg, Andorra, San Marino, the Vatican, and Malta.
Rene welcomed this idea. Liechtenstein currently had no meaningful
contact with Monaco, so he was happy enough just to be in contact with us. It would be amazing, he agreed, if we could
extend this concept to the other micro-states.
LIPS
from Paris dispatched an officer down to Monaco with secret briefing papers on
President Putin, whom the Prince would meet in just over ten days, following
his North Pole expedition.
I looked
through the documents when they arrived and found their contents disappointing; pitiful, even, compared to an SIS briefing, which their expert would soon deliver in person.
(Little wonder CIA Director Porter Goss found better information in The New York Times.)
That
evening I dined at Quai des Artistes with my SIS liaison contact and his colleague, their top Russia House
expert Christopher Steele, an impressive and highly polished professional.
For 45 minutes next morning, the Prince and I sat riveted by Steele’s masterful and highly substantive briefing on the current state of Russia and, more specifically, Vladimir Putin.
