The son of the late French president, Francois Mitterand, an Israeli-Russian billionaire and 40 other people charged with trafficking arms to the war-riven African state of Angola face a long-awaited trial in Paris which started this week. The accused are alleged to have received substantial payments for facilitating the deals.

The two key suspects are French businessman Pierre Falcone and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli tycoon based in France at the time. Prosecutors will contend that togther with others they organized the sale of Russian arms to Angola from 1993-2000, for a total of USdollars791 million, in breach of French government rules.

As indicated above other suspects will include the son of former President Francois Mitterrand and other members of France's political elite, who are accused of receiving money or gifts - undeclared for tax purposes - from a company run by Falcone in exchange for political or commercial favours.

The case will also have a direct link to at least two Celtic countries, Ireland and the Isle of Man. In 2002, the involvement of an Irish registered company in the international arms smuggling operation was revealed. In a web of sophisticated complexity the company was registered in Ireland in 1992 by a Dublin-based company formation agent on behalf of an Isle of Man company. The Irish operation then owned and operated aircraft based in Eastern Europe (Moldova) which flew several shipments of illegal arms to Africa.

Nor was it just the Angolan conflict this 'airline of death' fuelled as a UN report in 2000 linked the air transport operation to illicit arms trading into both Liberia and Sierra Leone.

There is, of course, nothing new about arms trading links involving the Isle of Man and other finance centres to conflicts and exploitation in Africa. Perhaps the most infamous case was the Mil-Tec Corporation link in the early nineties which saw Manx linked companies arm Hutu militia who conducted a genocidal rampage in Rwanda.

Earlier still there were Manx/Irish links to the initial stages of the 20 year long Angolan conflict when US intelligence body, the CIA, ran arms to the UNITA side via an air transport operation concealed through a web of companies registered offshore.

Related link to Mil-Tec scandal (for which no one was held to account):

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J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League 06/10/08

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