The most corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.

Tacitus

The ‘Connectivity’ or the Network of the powerful ones

On June 20^th, 2014 I was carefully listening to a speech given by Jean-Philippe Carpentier, former Director of TRACFIN (the French agency in charge of tracking the illicit circulation of capital), which is the money laundering cell of the French Ministry of Finances, during a round-table conference taking place at the French Parliament about the struggle against tax evasion. This top ranking civil servant then told us that in 1998 and 1999, the highest level of our State had ordered to be exclusively in charge of the street criminality. He repeated this sentence three times for the audience to understand that the white-collar criminality was at that time offered a form of impunity.

The whistleblowers suffer from the slowness of the justice because it is not independent from the political strength in power. The relationship developed by lobbyists and the elected representatives of the citizens is too close and leads to the fact that neither the whistleblowers nor the general interest can really be protected. The UBS file is a case study: A couple of weeks before I was dismissed by UBS at the beginning of 2012, the members of the ‘workers committee’ were called for a monthly meeting on November 29^th, 2011. Point 4 of the agenda was about the recruitment of the future President: “The new CEO will have to be able to improve the access of UBS to the highest levels of the French society […], to bear the UBS responsibilities in terms of risk, compliance and flexibility”. The President considers that “the group needs even more connectivity than skills to interfere with the French decision process by opening the doors of the CAC40 and the wealthy families”. Béatrice Lorin-Guérin, Head of the Resources Department, closed the point adding that “if the sales qualities of the future CEO are important, the latter mustn’t necessarily only have a private banking background”.

Jean-Frédéric de Leusse, a former member of the Council of State, took office in March 2012. In the months that followed, Françoise Bonfante, the UBS France compliance officer, was appointed by Pierre Moscovici, our French Minister of Finances, to the Commission of the Sanctions of the Financial Services Authority (Autorité des Marchés Financiers - AMF), the policeman of the banks, whereas UBS Switzerland and UBS France were already placed under investigation several times. Enough with the incestuous marriages between the finance industry, the control authorities and the political ‘elites’. Anne Michel, a journalist at Le Monde, informed us on March 1^st, 2014 that “it is a little political moment of friction” which Pierre Moscovici would have preferred to avoid when announcing the resignation two days before of the one whom he nominated on December 20^th, 2013. Indeed, after being informed of Mrs Bonfante’s appointment, I exposed this choice on the radio Europe 1 on February 6^th, 2014 and in parallel had submitted the case to Senator Eric Bocquet, who then exposed the problem during a public audition at the Senate, asking Mr Cazeneuve, our former Minister of Budget, to explain this appointment. The Deputy Alain Bocquet, also interested by the subject, followed suit and asked the same question to Mr Cazeneuve during a session at the French Parliament. United we stand proved that we were right. The position of this former UBS Head of Compliance had been immediately filled by an acquaintance of Mr. de Leusse, who attended the Voltaire class of the Ecole Normale d’Administration (ENA), of which President Hollande was also a student. As far as the UBS banker teams are concerned, the