Gérard Soisson (1935–1983) was a Luxemburgish banker who was at the center of the
Clearstream Affair. He was the person who authorized each non-published account, which would be known only by some insiders, including the auditors and members of the council of administration.
Whereas Soisson had refused numerous requests to open non-published accounts from such institutions as
Chase Manhattan in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
,
Chemical Bank
Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world.
Beginning ...
of
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and numerous subsidiaries of
Citibank
Citibank, N. A. (N. A. stands for " National Association") is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of financial services multinational Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, and later became First National City ...
,
Cedel
Clearstream is a financial services company that specializes in the settlement of securities transactions and is owned by Deutsche Börse AG. It provides settlement and custody as well as other related services for securities across all asset cl ...
opened hundreds of non-published accounts — all of them irregular — especially after the arrival of CEO
André Lussi
Clearstream is a financial services company that specializes in the settlement of securities transactions and is owned by Deutsche Börse AG. It provides settlement and custody as well as other related services for securities across all asset c ...
in 1990.
By 1980,
Ernest Backes
Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include:
People
*Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor
*Ernest, M ...
had become Cedel's #3, in charge of relations with clients, but he was fired in May 1983, allegedly because he "knew too much about the
Ambrosiano scandal". Two months after his dismissal, Gérard Soisson was found dead in Corsica.
With Soisson out of the way, there was nothing to stop the
abuse of the system, wrote
Lucy Komisar Lucy Komisar is a New York City-based investigative journalist and drama critic.
Komisar was editor of the ''Mississippi Free Press'' in Jackson, Mississippi from 1962 to 1963. The weekly covered the civil rights movement and related political and ...
. No longer were they just sub-accounts of officially listed accounts, Backes charges. Some were for banks that were not subsidiaries or even official members of Cedel.
At the start of 1995, Cedel had more than 2,200 published accounts. But in reality, according to documents obtained by Backes, Cedel that year managed more than 4,200 accounts, leading to an alleged total of 2,000 unpublished accounts in 1995.
1935 births
1983 deaths
French bankers
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