Ex-president of France Chirac had a secret bank account in Japan, says new book
March 20, 2008
A new book coming out in France feeds rumors that former French President Jacques Chirac had sweetheart deals with Japan, including a secret Japanese bank account.
Chirac always denied rumors of such a bank account, but French investigative journalists Nicolas Beau and Olivier Toscer kept digging. The result is their new book, L’incroyable histoire du compte japonais de Jacques Chirac (The Incredible Story of Jacques Chirac’s Japanese Bank Account), in which that make a case for the existence of Chirac’s account in a bank in Japan, through which may have passed hundreds of millions of French francs. The book has been excerpted in a publication aptly entitled Bakchich (French slang for bribes or kickbacks) of which Beau is editor.
The two French authors took two years to write the book about the affair, which was a bone of contention between Chirac and Lionel Jospin in 2001. The scandal began during an investigation by the French government agency Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE) in 1996 into the Japanese Tokyo Sowa Bank (TSB), which was seeking to do business in France. The investigation centered on the bank’s chief executive, Shoichi Osada. In Novemer of 1996, the story goes, a message marked “urgent and classified” from a DGSE agent in Tokyo was sent to investigators in Paris, saying that mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac held an account at TSB worth 300 million French francs (45 million euros). The allegation remained buried until 2001, when another DGSE agent turned it up and made it public. The book goes on to say that Chirac maintained that the affair was simply a smear campaign by the Left in France who wanted to regain political power in France, and that no such account ever existed. An investigation was then launched into the investigation. Allegations were made that Chirac opened the account in 1992, but they have never been proven.
Chirac’s ties to Japan, with which he has a cultural affinity evidenced by more than 50 visits and longstanding relationships with many in business there, run deep. He was known to have been entertained on the yachts and private villas of these men, many of whom were Francophiles, and with whom Chirac had a sort of mutual cultural admiration society. What other dealings he had with Japanese bankers and financiers over the years have been the subject of speculation in France for over a decade.
Shoichi Osada has since been imprisoned on charges of malfeasance in 2000. Chirac denies having met him before 1993, while the book asserts that the relationship went much further back and was much closer than Chirac admits. Osada was even awarded the medal of the Legion d’Honneur by Chirac while he was President of France. Chirac has refused to meet with the two authors. Despite the reams of evidence the writers compiled to support the claims in their book, no offical proof has ever been made of Chirac’s shadowy financial dealings with Japan while in office in France.
In the meantime, former president Chirac is preparing the launch of his foundation for the “dialogue among cultures”. Two trips are already planned for this spring: one to China, the other to Japan.
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