Cool (Gun) Running

Even before the Pinon affair broke, as early as 1976, a Belgian ruling class scandal was underway. A consortium of Belgian companies, Eurosystems, had bribed their way into a construction job in Saudi Arabia. Readers of John Perkin's Economic Hit Men may remember that he was required by certain Arab gentlemen to procure for them young blonde girls they could have their way with while in the west. The consortium had hired, as a public relations executive, one Fortunato Israel, a prostitute and leader of a ring of high class call girls. They jetted around the globe, dealing with Saudi big wigs. Surprisingly neither this strategy nor the thousands of millions of dollars in bribes won them the contract and Eurosystems went bankrupt.

The reason this sordid little affair enters our story, other than that or story is one of sordid little affairs, is the people involved. A certain subsidiary of the Eurosystems consortium was run by Baron Bonvoison of the Front de la Jeunesse. The leaser of the call girls had been implicated by Christine Doret in the organisation of orgies. The orgiast Minister of Defence vanden Boeynants was involved, and one of the lobbyists was Prince Albert, who only attended the orgies when underage girls were present.

Also we have one Roger Boas of a corrupt defence company, as if there were any other kind on merchant of death, a company called Asco. We'll have more about him later.

Andre Cools was a well established Belgian politico. He had been budget minister, deputy Prime Minister, head of the Socialist party and so forth. He was eventually shot dead in Liege in 1991, ever since which his death had been linked to illegal and illicit arms deals, corruption and so forth. The Merchants of Death. The man who replaced him in his role within the party was one Alain van der Biest. He unfortunately and, for us, inconveniently, suicided just after becoming the main suspect in the death of Andre Cools, having been briefly imprisoned. Mr Taxquet, the chauffeur of van den Biest, was convicted of the murder of Cools, not alone, and sentenced to twenty years. The story of Taxquet's arrest is and interesting one. He was arrested with a businessman in Liechenstein trying to cash millions of dollars of bearer bonds stolen from Zaventem airport in Belgium. Only after his arrest was he subject to allegations of murder.

But the prosecutions were years after the death.

According to the ATLAS dossier, a result of the Belgian investigation into their nationals' involvement in Iran/Contra, Cools was personally involved in illegal weapons shipments to the Contras. As was the aforementioned Roger Boas of the ASCO company, again to be returned to later. Also mentioned in the ATLAS dossier as providing weapons for the Contras and Iran are Mathot, vanden Boeynants, Beurir... the usual Belgian crowd.

Cools himself was also implicated in the Agusta affair, by contrast a relatively minor thing although it's been speculated that his resentment at the paucity of his bribes led to his decision to blow the whistle, which in turn led to his death. Certainly he said he would reveal all, that there would be ties to organised crime and so forth. Certainly he never got the chance. Certainly Minister of Defence Coeme, NATO secretary-general Claes and the chairman treasurer and secretary of the Socialist Party were all convicted and fined. Connerotte, later to find fame investigating the Dutroux case, was involved here, ordering a raid on the Parti offices to investigate their finances, which is what led to the surfacing of the Agusta affair.

Among the names Cools named were billionaires from Canada and America, major figures in the American government such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, Neal Bush and our very own Jonathan Aitken and Mark Thatcher. Cools had been off to Switzerland doing research, meeting Iraqi financiers and South American gun runners.

One of the reasons it took so long for justice to be done, over half a decade between the deaths of Cools and van der Biest, Connerotte was called off, as he would later be sacked from the Dutroux case.

The two men arrested for actually committing the Cools murder were Tunisians, former members of the Afghan Mujahideen at that time working for the violent Islamists of Algeria. They were part of a gun-running ring tied to the movement, other members of which have supposedly joined up with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda in more recent years, although on should always take claims like that less than seriously.