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NEWS
Show Trial for Jews Charged with Laundering Money by
Shuttling Checks between France and Israel
By Arnon Yaffeh, Paris
A special courtroom was set up to hold all of the defendants
in the largest trial ever held in France. The case involves a
money-laundering network for French checks that were paid in
Israel and ultimately cashed in France. It took three full
hours to read the names of the 142 defendants on Monday,
including Daniel Bouton, CEO of Societe Generale bank, who
has constantly been in the headlines after losing 4.5 billion
euros ($6.6 billion) through rogue trading by one of his
traders.
The cameras were trained mainly on Bouton and other Jews. The
trial has all the elements of old-fashioned antisemitism:
Jewish traders, black-market money, banks. The wholesalers
have been accused of laundering 200 million euro ($290
million) through a check-writing scam.
Gilles-William Goldnadel, the attorney for one of the Jewish
merchants in Sentier, Paris' garment district, described the
trial as grotesque. He says that a single judge is unable to
hear all of the arguments presented by the defense and the
prosecution for each and every defendant. "We built an
enormous hall out of a tent that resembles a circus," said
Goldnadel, referring to the courtroom set up in the corridor
of the Justice Palace. "It's unclear what the judge had in
mind, unless it was to degrade the Jewish defendants and make
them conspicuous. In the French imagination the Jews are
still identified with money, interest, intrigues and
cunning."
He said that each of the defendants should have been tried
separately to ensure a fair trial. "They've brought Bouton,
the bank manager, to trial as if he could have checked each
and every check that came to his bank."
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