Denis Robert

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Denis Robert is a French journalist and writer, author of "Revelation$" in 2001 with Ernest Backes, who was #3 of Cedel until he was fired in May 1983. He worked for Libération newspaper for 12 years, and is best known for being the first one to have accused Clearstream of having non-published accounts.

After the publication of his book, Clearstream's CEO, André Lussi was dismissed, and Belgian and French parliamentary commissions created. The only convictions to follow this controversy were convictions of Backes and others for libel.

He has written two other books about his investigation of Clearstream: "La Boite Noire" ("The Black Box")in 2002 and "Clearstream: L'Enquete" ("Clearstream: The Investigation)in 2006. The last one focuses on another aspect of the Clearstream scandal, which implicates several high-ranking French government officials. In 2005, an investigative judge received anonymous letters with extensive Clearstream accounts information and records. Some of these accounts seemed to belong to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister, rival of President Jacques Chirac and his protege, Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister of France. Furthermore, the accounts were supposed to be the home of illegal bribe money, tied to a secret arms deal with Taiwan (Taiwan-frigates scandal). As the ensuing investigation showed, the records were obtained from Denis Robert under false pretenses by a Clearstream "insider" who had claimed he could help him with his investigation, but really worked for a French intelligence agency. The investigation also shows the documents were falsified and Nicolas Sarkozy was cleared. In a later development, Dominique de Villepin is now under scrutiny for having allegedly ordered an investigation of Nicolas Sarkozy by French intelligence in order to discredit him and eliminate a political opponent. Some even claim that the falsification of the Clearstream records and the anonymous letters were engineered by Matignon (office of the Prime Minister). On the other hand, it was demonstrated that Sarkozy himself had knew long before he publicly admitted it that he was on the list of alleged holders of illegal Clearstream accounts, but pretended to not be in the known in order to make himself appear as a victim.