Banks Game: from Kuwaitgate to Clearstream, by Christian Basano

Christian Basano was born on July 12, 1957 in Nice. He is a professional accountant.

From discovery to discovery, Christian Basano will be immersed in the surreal universe of Clearstream, back-commissions, public and private embezzlement systems of all kinds. In short, the real world of the political-financial medium...

AN EXTRACT FROM THE BOOK:

And there you have it, I was thrown into another adventure, only this time it was Canadian…

The letter that we sent to the Canadian lawyer, Luc Menard who practises in Montreal, was relatively sibylline. It asked him to arrange a meeting between one of his clients and the Manager of the Royal Trust of Toronto. All we gave him was the number and my name, not mentioning the sum involved. According to the documents in our possession prepared by Mr Mottu, the solicitor in Geneva, this sum could be anything in the area of $US 1811 billion.

At 7.30 local time on Friday 23rd February 1996, which is a strange time to make a professional phone call, Jo-Ann Ryan, Senior Advisor of the Royal Trust of Toronto, called Luc Menard who also happens to be a client. She informed him that the bank wanted to see the client – me – in person. He immediately confirmed the good news by sending us a fax. A meeting was arranged with the Royal Trust in their Toronto office for the 26th February.

The question that remained was whether or not we should tell the detectives about this step. Given that they were professionals, we came to the conclusion that they were going to find out about our little trip anyway. If we eventually managed to unblock the account without telling them, we would be on our way to the third world war… with Ferraye in the role of thermonuclear missile launcher. On the other hand, the complaint filed by the aforementioned in Geneva could have been followed up by the launching of an international rogatory commission and as a consequence, a mandate to bring… Time was getting on and we needed more information. We called the detectives.

After checking their sources, they said that the road was clear but that they would accompany – or rather follow – us on our trip. We reserved our flight tickets.

I didn’t have much of a weekend trying to explain to Maria why I had put a hold on the excellent reasons to abandon this mad story. I knew that she was right. But how could I get out of it when a bank on the other side of the world had asked to see a client in person? A client who was worth $1811 dollars and that client was me… Besides, I swore to her on my life that it would be the last time. Afterwards, that would be then end of it: whatever happened, I’d throw in the towel!

We didn’t expect to have a night of passion to say our goodbyes (maybe the last for a while!), it’s not so easy with a fraud charge hanging over your head. Our son Sébastien was born a few days early on the 8th November 1996…