Charles Debbasch This is Me

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1. 1. Happy New Year

   www.khmerintelligence.org/Opin - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/28/2003   Last Visited: 12/19/2007

   The article concerns a man named Charles Debbasch (also spelled sometimes as Debbach) who has been a long - time adviser to the late dictator of Togo General Gnassingbe Eyadema, who died suddenly in early February.
   
   Who is Charles Debbasch?
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   In the case of Debbasch, he was the Dean of the Aix-en-Provence Faculty of Law in 1983, who allowed Ranariddh to leave for Bangkok to become Samdech Sihanouk's Personal Representative in Asia and Cambodia, without having to resign from his post of lecturer at the University and still touching a salary even though absent from the University and the country.
   
   According to the French Communist Party's newspaper L'Humanité of 25 February 2005, Charles Debbasch has recently been charged by the Appeals Court of Aix-en-Provence. The French judicial authorities ordered his arrest to be placed in prison for two years with 150,000 Euros as a fine for having misused for personal gains the funds of the Vasarely Foundation of France (http://www.fondationvasarely.fr/) to the tune of 450,000 Euros. In 1997, Debbasch opened an account in a Luxembourg bank for 1.2 million Euros and it is suspected that some of that money came from Togo. May be it came from Cambodia also?
   
   Debbasch was responsible for changing the Togolese Constitution early this month - remember Gour's change to Cambodia's Constitution last year to allow the "Vote in Block" or "Package Vote" [see KI, 19 December 2003: « "Package Vote" is the brainchild of Frenchman Claude Gour »; and KI, 16 August 2004: "Gour to be paid a $5-million fee"] - allowing the son of the late dictator Gnassingbe Eyadema to take over the running of the country and preventing the Speaker of the Togolese Parliament to act as interim president while elections were organized as enshrined in the Constitution.
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   For more information about Charles Debbasch, read the following article in French titled " Juriste mercenaire" in the 18 February 2005 edition of Libération by clicking at

2. 2. NEWS

   www.artcult.com/na236.html - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/14/2001   Last Visited: 5/31/2006

   The trial of Charles Debbasch, dean of the Law University of Aix-en-provence, southern France, and former manager of the Vasarely Foundation who has been accused of breach of trust, started on December 12th 2002.
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   Charles Debbasch, who was also a close adviser of French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing during the 1970s, has always denied the charges laid against him and accused instead Vasarely's family of having dispossessed the Foundation, which he ran from 1981 until 1993.
   
   Michèle Vasarely, the artist's daughter-in-law, said that Debbasch had misappropriated at least 3,4 million FF ($ 470,000) and stolen seven works from the Foundation.
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   Debbasch, who fought during six years to put his trial off, retorted that such accusations were nothing but infamous. He will however have to give the judge of the Aix-en-Provence court an explanation about the transfer of 2,3 million FF ($ 320,000) to the Swiss bank account of a Panama-based company as well as important deposits in cash made in the bank account of his mistress, renovation works in his house, the financing of a local radio station, travels to Hong Kong and salaries to several secretaries all paid by the Foundation.

3. 3. Watch France: Togo Presidential Adviser Holds Influence

   www.francewatcher.org/2005/02/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/23/2005   Last Visited: 11/16/2007

   Read on, and learn the story of a certain Charles Debbasch, who loves dogs more than people.
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   Presidential legal adviser Charles Debbasch is believed to have tweaked the West African nation's constitution so that Gnassingbe Eyadema could run for another term a few years ago.
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   The trust Eyadema placed in Debbasch showed that a regime better known for going to horrifying lengths to silence dissent - beating old women with belt buckles, torturing political foes so severely their fingers blackened and fell off - also recognized the value of more subtle, pseudo-legal means when it came to hanging onto power.
   
   With Love, his tiny brown Yorkshire, propped in the crook of his arm, Debbasch was constantly seen at the dictator's side or elsewhere in Lome, where he had a home in a fashionable neighborhood. He does not give interviews or public statements, though he did write a 2001 book about his pet: "A Love for Love: Five Years with my Favorite Yorkshire."
   
   He reportedly is still steering the course of Togo's regime, which faces international pressure, including from the United States, for Eyadema's son, Faure Gnassingbe, to step down. "Debbasch represents a new model for a new era," said French filmmaker
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   Debbasch, who has homes in Togo and France, was in France when Eyadema died.
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   Debbasch made an in-flight call to Lome, and shortly afterward, the flight was refused permission to land and diverted to neighboring Benin, the insiders said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of angering powerful forces in their country.
   
   The next day, Debbasch was able to cross the border into Togo by road, but Natchaba was barred.
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   For 10 years, nearly every major decision and piece of legislation in Togo has been vetted by Debbasch, observers of the regime say. In 2002, he reportedly rewrote the constitution to allow Eyadema to run for another term.
   
   Debbasch met Eyadema through French lawyer Jacques Verges, who was also on the Togolese payroll and was known for representing people like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
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   The 67-year-old Debbasch was once the dean of the university law school in Aix-en-Provence in southern France and an adviser to former French President Valery Giscard d' Estaing.
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   Togo opposition leader Harry Olympio said the sense that Debbasch had
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   "Debbasch is protected by soldiers," said Olympio, who as a former
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   member of parliament once worked with Debbasch. "Otherwise the Togolese