French investigating magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke, specialised in financial crime, announced on October 7th he is to open an enquiry into suspected 'misuse of company property' (in French, abus de biens sociaux) in the 1994 sale by France to Pakistan of the three Agosta 90 attack submarines. Van Ruymbeke's enquiry,which was opposed by the public prosecutor's office1, will focus on the suspected payment of illegal kickbacks from the sale of the submarines to fund former prime minister Edouard Balladur's 1995 presidential election bid.
This will be in parallel with an ongoing, two-year old investigation led by another magistrate, Marc Trévedic, into the murders in Karachi, Pakistan, in May 2002 of 11 French naval engineers working on the construction of the submarines. Trévedic has told the victims' families that he now believes the bomb blast that killed the men and three other people was in retaliation for the non-payment of bribes promised to a number of local intermediaries.
Bernard Cazeneuve was the rapporteur for the French parliament's mission of enquiry into the Karachi attack, which completed its largely open-ended report in May. Following the announcement of Van Ruymbeck's investigation, Cazeneuve, a Socialist Party Member of Parliament for Cherbourg, the Brittany port where many of the Karachi victims' families are based, gave this exclusive interview to Mediapart.
Mediapart: You were the rapporteur of the parliamentary fact-finding mission into the Karachi bomb attack. How do you react to the fact that judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke, specialised in financial crime, has decided, against the advice of the prosecutors' office, to investigate suspected activities of corruption that might explain the motives behind the deadly attack on the DCN employees in may 2002?
BERNARD CAZENEUVE: "I believe it is important in a democracy, to borrow Montesquieu's phrase, that 'it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power'2. Examining magistrates enjoy an independence that they have courageously displayed in a case in which everyone can measure the political sensitivity. This courage no doubt finds precious support in the determination of the civil parties and their legal team. It is impossible to resist, at length, the search for the truth when there have been deaths, a tragedy, an irreparable suffering. The servility of a prosecuting department under orders won't be able to resist for long either. Judges Van Ruymbeke and Trévidic have placed their integrity, their determination, at the service of truth and justice."
Mediapart: Judge Van Ruymbeke discovered that in 1995 the Constitutional Council's assessors advised the rejection of Edouard Balladur's election campaign accounts, notably because they contained suspicious cash payments. Did you have knowledge of this?
B.C.: "No, I'm discovering it now. The Consitutional Council is the guarantor of the respect of the highest standards that regulate the Republic. The fact that it could have by-passed the explicit reservations expressed by its own assessors is shocking."
Mediapart: Did Edouard Balladur, who you were able to question in extremis, mention before the mission at any moment the reticence expressed at the Constitutional Council concerning these cash sums?
B.C.: "No, Edouard Balladur did not mention these difficulties. He said only, to our mission, that the validation of his election campaign accounts was the guarantee that his campaign adhered to the law."
Mediapart: During your investigations, did you ask the Constitutional Council to provide you with documents relative to M. Balladur's presidential campaign, notably the conclusions of the assessors who advised a rejection of the former prime minister's election campaign accounts?
B.C.: "I indicated, during the questioning of Edouard Balladur, that the best manner of re-establishing the traceability of the funds deposited in cash on his campaign account was to ask the Constitutional Council about their provenance. The former prime minister replied to me that the answer to my question could be found in the archives of the Constitutional Council, supplied at the time by his collaborator Monsieur Francis Lamy, member of the Council of State. We did not question the Constitutional Council because that posed a legal problem, given the deliberations of the Constitutional Council are covered by the secrecy of its deliberations."
Mediapart: But how do you explain that M. Balladur's campaign accounts were validated despite the advice of the assessors?
B.C.: "I don't have an explanation and it is now for the members of the Constitutional Council to explain this to us."
Mediapart: What is your reaction to the fact that your mission was never informed of this matter?
B.C.: "I think that had our fact-finding mission been informed, its work would have taken a different aspect. During the mission I never ceased to denounce the hindrances and obstructions in acceding to the truth, the lies by omission. I don't think I got things totally wrong."
Mediapart: Do you intend to ask for explanations from the Constitutional Council, or even the government, who left your parliamentary mission in the dark over important documents regarding M. Balladur's campaign?
B.C.: "The mission no longer exists, and cannot act any further. I think that the Constitutional Council owes the truth to the victims and we must demand from it transparency. I would like my parliamentary group to write to the Constitutional Council, demand of it transparency and thus call on it to provide it. I will be asking Jean-Marc Ayrault [Socialist Party parliamentary leader] to take action over this."
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1: Under French law, an examining magistrate, who also has the title of judge, is independent of hierarchical (ultimately ministerial) interference in their investigations. A public prosecutor is answerable to their hierarchy, which is ultimately the justice minister.
2: French political thinker Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), 'The Spirit of the Laws', 11.4; 'Constant experience show us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it[ ...] it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power'.
'Cynicism that strikes at fundamental values'
Mediapart: What do you think of the attitude of the chairman of the parliamentary defence commission, UMP Member of Parliament Guy Teissier, who, as Mediapart revealed in September, refused this summer to communicate the contents of the hearings carried out by your mission to investigating magistrate Marc Trévidic?
B.C.: "I was not informed of this decision. No member of the mission was, to my knowledge, except perhaps its chairman, Yves Fromion [UMP Member of Parliament for the Cher department]. I learned through the press of this refusal to transmit to the judiciary the verbatim reports. That's odd, no?
The refusal is founded, it seems, on the principle of the separation of powers. Under the pretext that a judicial investigation was underway, this principle had already been cited by the government for not transmitting to parliament the elements it needed to conduct its investigations.
Now our enquiry is over and there are no longer any risks of interference between the powers, the president of the defence commission uses the pretext of this same principle so as not to transmit to the examining magistrate information that could be useful to him in establishing the truth.
Concerning Rwanda, in 1998, when judge Bruguière1 had asked parliament to provide him with the verbatim reports we had of the hearings concerning the attack on president Habyarimana's plane, we gave them to him to assist the proceedings of justice. The separation of powers is here a grand principle that serves small interests."
Mediapart: When your report was published in May 2010, you denounced an "operation of hindrance" by the executive against your fact-finding mission. Given the latest revelations mentioned earlier, was not your description well below the reality?
B.C.: "Yes, very much below."
Mediapart: In the conclusion of your report, concerning the causes of the Karachi attack you neither exclude nor favour any one lead. Given the repeated obstruction of the judiciary by the ruling political powers and the confirmation that Edouard Balladur's presidential campaign, for which Nicolas Sarkozy was manager, received cash payments considered to be suspicious by the Constitutional Council's assessors, do you not now favour the theory that retro-commissions from the submarine sale to Pakistan could have financed this campaign?
B.C.: "I think that the magistrates must pursue their work in such a manner that we can have an answer to this question. I had an intimate conviction. This has been strengthened by recent developments. But concerning such a subject, and in face of such a dramatic event, I believe I owe the very highest intellectual rigour towards the victims' families. Only the proof counts. It will be necessary to fight further to obtain the truth. I refuse to accuse without absolute proof. It is the best reply to the government's obstruction manoeuvres."
Mediapart: As Member of Parliament and mayor of Cherbourg who has leant strong support to the victims' families, what conclusions do you have regarding this affair?
B.C.: "That the cynicism of the state doesn't spare old democracies, and it can even strike them at the heart of their most fundamental values. I have also discovered the grandeur of those who are the most humble when they stand up and are determined."
Mediapart: What, concretely, are the next steps that you intend taking following these recent revelations?
B.C.: "I shall continue to act in parliament so as to force the government to account for itself. I shall remain at the disposition of the families. It is their courage that dictates my action."
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1: Jean-Louis Bruguière, a former investigating magistrate specialised in anti-terrorism. In 2006 he indicted Paul Kagame, now president of the Republic of Rwanda, for ordering the 1994 assasination of the then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in a missile attack on his plane, in which three French nationals also died. Bruguière left the judiciary to begin a short-lived political career with president Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party.
English version: Graham Tearse