As Bakchich revealed it in the previous article, indictments are starting to fall in the DCN case, notably on Wednesday June 25 against a former employee of the DST who was in charge of carrying out discreet missions for our brave weapon dealers. On the other hand, the judicial review only applied to the events that happened between 2001 and 2004, and they abstained from investigating on the big contracts for the frigates, the submarines, the torpedo boats and other boats. Those huge markets and their backstage we have been telling you about for the last couple days gave rise to a lot of money evaporating. At the heart of these delicate negotiations and state secrets there is a mysterious man, friendly and with a great ability to socialize with the “right” people, Jean-Marie Boivin. He is sort of an Alfred Sirven of weaponry.
[Alfred Sirven, a French business man famous in France for being highly involved in two judicial cases : the Elf case, and the frigates in Taiwan]
In the DCNI’s premises, the employees didn’t really know what Jean-Marie Boivin’s job who joined the company in 1994, was. “Lawyer ? CFO ?” asked herself a former executive in this company. Even though, everyone knows each other at the DCNI. The company only had around thirty employees when it started their activity and up to 120 at the beginning of the year 2000 who are divided in two categories : the engineers and the sales force. But Boivin, he is much more than that.
Nonetheless at the DCNI, people understood that this friendly and cautious character, former military assistant of general Heinrich (the future boss of the direction of military intelligence), often goes around Luxembourg. He doesn’t hide it and even got the resident status which didn’t prevent him from staying in a nice apartment close to the Champ-de-Mars and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Bakchich sent him a mail at this address to have the privilege of having a discussion with him and then called him. But this great specialist of financial schemes politely declined our invitation. What a shame !
Luxembourg and Boivin, an old story… Close to the son of the banker Lambert, a big shot in finance whose name was used as a corporate name for a well-known banking institution, Boivin is very close to the Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker but also with the former Home Secretary from Luxembourg, Michel Wolter who he invited to a memorable safari in South Africa. Paid by the DCNI… Above all, his friendship with the Great Duke of Luxembourg, with whom he traveled to Sweden, Chili and Brazil, is useful to him as a safe conduct and even allows him to get by everywhere.
At the DCNI where we legally paid nice commissions to get international markets, Jean-Marie Boivin brilliantly took care of the hidden side of export contracts. He did that via a small and discreet company named Heine, a black box for the frigate contracts in the ‘90s.
When in 2000, France signed the OCDE convention that banned commissions to officials abroad ; Jean-Marie Boivin is less seen at the DCNI and takes the management of other companies. It was either in Luxembourg (for example Eurolux Gestion) or in Irland or in Switzerland (just Eurolux). But also other structures in more secretive territories such as the Isle of Man. Recently he supposedly diversified by creating companies in the Mauritian Islands as well as the Seychelles.
With him, an accountant, Yves Schmit, is in charge of keeping the books up to date and managing a whole bunch of companies without any kind of activity used only for fiscal reasons and to evade money. Eich Gestion, Kandar, Samson, Riverbrow, Kraftwerk and so on. To transfer the commission money and other retro commissions between the companies, Boivin and Schmitt didn’t trust the typical procedures such as the SWIFT banking. “These two geniuses of obscure finance, explains a former executive from Thales, would rather use other procedures and notably the more discreet financial compensation establishments such as Clearstream”. This information is vital. If Jean-Marie Boivin sometimes used Clearstream to transfer certain financial flows, we can understand why some people were able to invent fake linked listings, inspired by this honorable institution.
Jean-Marie Boivin is so well connected to Luxembourg that they will go find him to act as the middleman in a big boat contract that France is trying to unload on Belgium thanks to a Luxembourgish financing.
Like this, as we can read above, the DCNI is looking to “sell” for 600 000 Euros, their former executive’s services to Armaris, the commercial company created in 2003 by Thales and the DCN to replace the DCNI. And this Worked ! Armaris’ managers agree and mandated Jean-Marie Boivin for a lobbying action to the defense minister of Luxembourg. As part of this mission, Boivin went to the Elysée to convince people close to Chirac that it is useful for the president to go there and promote French boats.
To fulfill his brilliant missions (see above for the second document), Jean-Marie Boivin used another company named “Protile”, created only for this mission. The sale didn’t happen but the 600 000 Euros were paid. Enough to pay for a safari in Africa to the Luxemburgish minister !
With the creation in 2006 of the DCNS, a merger between DCN and Thales, Boivin was frozen out. A little while after Armaris’ creation and the activity reduction of the DCNI, Boivin is set aside from the system. They offered him 2 million Euros for his final settlement but he doesn’t see it that way. This greedy man demanded eight to ten million Euros, and vexed because nothing came, he wrote to the whole word to protest by saying things such as “I who served France, the DCNI and the French weaponry !”
His letters are addressed to Matignon, at that time lead by Dominique de Villepin, to Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet, at that time the Home Secretary. Claude Guéant and François Pérol, two of his closest partners receive the protest letters. The DCN’s boss, Jean-Marie Poimbeuf, some high executives from Thales such as Jean-Paul Perrier, manager of the international division, also received vindictive letters. On the phone Boivin is even more threatening and mentions his safes in Switzerland.
To try to reason with him, Sarkozy’s cabinet sent two agents of the DST of Metz according to our sources. Be careful, Danger ! With all the documents this man has packed in his safe in UBS in Zurich, the most well kept secrets of the Republic might be revealed.
Soon, part 4 of our investigation that will tell you what happened to the big weaponry contracts when Chirac was elected president in 1995 and attempts to tackle the problem. We will see how Business Intelligence companies tried to put pressure on middlemen who follow Balladur.
To read the first 2 episodes of our investigation :
Translated by Jacky Chen