PARIS, 19 August — French magistrate Isabelle Prevost-Desprez has admitted in exasperation that the more indictments she issues with regard to a major money-laundering scheme between France and Israel that she is in charge of investigating, the more the scheme seems to continue practically unabated.
And this in spite of the measures supposedly taken by the French Government which has repeatedly said it wants to put a halt to the practice which has been robbing French banks, companies and individuals of thousands of millions of dollars.
Although indictments have regularly been handed down since 1998 by Judge Prevost-Desprez and her predecessors, and although such major banks as Societe Generale, Barclays France, Israeli Discount Bank and Leumi have been accused of taking part in the scheme, the French magistrate was forced to admit in recent days that there seems very little that she can do to bring any of the major actors to justice, indeed control the flows in illegal transactions that have hardly slowed down since the first indictments were handed down on August 3rd 1998.
The most recent indictments date from this summer — they were handed down July 4th — and concern French-based companies theoretically selling advertising space, but who serve as nothing less than fronts, say French judicial sources, for companies that take the money they receive from other French companies, naturally in the form of cheques, then rather than deposit them in French banks, send them directly to Israel where they are turned into cash at change bureaus which take a commission on the transaction, and then return the cheques to France, usually to the same French banks where they were originally issued.
But, as the cheques when originally issued were made out to bogus destinees whose names are easily transformed — for example one of the ad-selling companies named itself SEB, a name that got transformed into Sebbag by the time the cheque had returned to Paris — they inevitably find their way to the French banks where they are always honored for payment.
After more than one hundred indictments handed down by Prevost-Desprez and other judges taking part in the investigation, the only change that seems to have taken place — this according to French judicial sources — seems to be the way in which the laundering scheme seems to function.
When representatives of French banks like Societe Generale and Barclays France were indicted for their alleged role in the scheme, they immediately let it be known they had taken measures designed to halt the practice, at least as far as they were concerned, a decision which usually took the form of a refusal to accept for deposit any cheques emanating from Israel and notably from the banks already indicted for having taken part in the scheme.
But, notes a source in Prevost-Desprez’s entourage, there still remain banks in France ready and willing to accept the cheques for deposit once they return from Israel.
Then too, the launderers have been able to make use of the banking facilities of third countries — notably in Belgium and Switzerland — facilities which make the laundering scheme all the more difficult to control as the third-country banking establishments in question — usually located in Brussels and Zurich — bear a certain prestige that make the cheques difficult to refuse once they eventually make their way back to France.
And every time that happens, says a source close to Prevost-Desprez, the French magistrate seems that much closer to giving up a fight that increasingly — and inexorably — takes on the dimensions of a losing battle.
