The European affairs minister in France’s new right-wing government, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, remains under formal investigation in a case involving the sale of French anti-aircraft frigates. Intelligence Online has picked up some fresh details.

Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres' appointment as minister in the new French government has brought to mind the fact he still remains under examination for "money-laundering" and "illicit financing of political parties." The case involves the sale of two anti-aircraft frigates by France to Saudi Arabia for Ffr19 billion ($2.6 billion). It follows another affair concerning the sale of French frigates to Taiwan in the early 1990s which also raised a storm of sorts.

Dubbed Sawari 2, the contract for the Saudi vessels was signed in Morocco on Nov. 19 by the two defense ministers at the time, prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz and Francois Leotard.

Intelligence Online has a complete rundown of the negotiations surrounding the sale which was supplied by someone involved in the bargaining. It brings a number of new details to light. Some of the main aspects are already known. For instance, a double kickback worth Ffr50 million ($6.9 million) returned to France and 10% of it went to finance Leotard's Partie Republicain. The party funneled the cash into an account in Luxemburg and took out a loan guaranteed against it from the Fondo Social di Cooperazione European, an Italian bank accustomed to such operations (IOL 400).

The document obtained by IOL lists a number of meetings between Sept. 29, 1993 and Sept. 18, 1996, the date when a Saudi go-between, sheikh Ali Ben Mussalam, a businessman close to prince Sultan and who had long been in charge of relations between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, set up residence in Geneva. The list points to strenuous efforts by the French defense electronics company Thomson CSF to outflank ben Mussalam (the firm, now named Thales, equipped the frigates in question and one of its former executives, Nicolas Bazire, was chief-of-staff to the French prime minister at the time). There were many contacts between other Saudi go-betweens and Alain Thetard, Jean-Paul Perrier, Olivier Lambert (legal expert) and a certain Mr. Barbes, all of them top-line Thomson negotiators who were also involved in the earlier deal with Taiwan.

The sequence of events also confirms the role of Ben Mussalam in mounting the financial package before the Sawari 2 contract; for instance, he held talks with officials from the Paribas bank on Aug. 16, 1994. It shows that Donnedieu de Vabres met with him regularly as well in 1995, after the contract was signed, presumably to talk about money (one meeting took place in the late morning of March 10, 1995 at the Prince de Galles hotel in Paris).

The then-prime minister, Edouard Balladur, also involved himself personally in the deal by meeting with Ben Mussalam on Nov. 18, 1993 and on Jan. 1, 1994. For his part, Bazir, Balladur's chief of staff, received the Saudi king's "representative" on several occasions. As for Leotard, he trooped to the Prince de Gaulles hotel to consult with Ben Mussalam on Oct. 30, 1993, March 18 and April 6 (with Donnedieu de Vabres), and on May 26, June 13, July 5, July 20, Sept. 14 and October 26, 1994. After the contract was signed the two met again, on Dec. 21, 1994 and Jan. 2, 1995.

There were a lot of political side-shows to the affair in France. And the Moroccan king played a key role in the transaction. Shortly after Ben Mussalam was sidelined in July, 1996 he asked to be received by Moroccan king Hassan II.

With acknowledgement to Intelligence Online.