“Courage is being scared to death…and saddling up anyway.” ~ John Wayne
By Vanessa Biard-Schaeffer
This week in Via Europa, you’ll have the opportunity to hear the incredible story of an exceptional man, Frédéric Pierucci. Frédéric is a former Senior Executive at Alstom, a French energy company with a global presence.
In the 1960s, the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, decided to focus on achieving energy independence through the use of nuclear energy, which today accounts for 75% of the country’s electricity production. Alstom was THE company that made this possible. Although the company experienced some financial difficulties in the early 2000s, it continued to expand its business.
In 2013, Frédéric Pierucci was appointed as the head of Alstom’s partnership in Asia and moved to Singapore. At the time, he visited the United States regularly as he had ongoing business there. On Sunday April 14, 2013, he was arrested by the FBI in a plane that had just landed in New York. The ensuing events make for a gripping story worthy of John Grisham’s thrillers.
In this interview, Frédéric explains the legal and financial traps that he and Alstom faced. From his high-security prison in Wyatt, Rhode Island—one of the prisons privatized in the ’90s—Frédéric began to assemble the pieces of a puzzle that eventually allowed him to understand why his fate was dependent on Alstom’s, and how the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was being misused to target foreign companies, particularly in Europe.
As he moved through this haze, dealing with numerous obstacles—ultimately resolved with the sale of Alstom to General Electric—Frédéric came to understand that he had been taken hostage in a merciless economic war.
Frédéric’s story helps us understand the legal, political, and human ramifications of this targeted attack against a foreign company but also against people who acted in good faith as links in a long chain of decisions and decision-makers. Frédéric’s courage and patience were remarkable as he stood up to his opponents.
In addition to the FCPA, Frédéric highlights another program, the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act), which represents a risk for any company whose data are stored by a U.S. company. To conclude the interview, Frédéric shares his thoughts about the future of Europe vis-à-vis the United States—and the need to turn the page on the post-1945 period.
In Let's Go to the Movies, Catherine will discuss Terms and Conditions May Apply, an eye-opening documentary on all the things you are agreeing to when clicking “I accept.”
In Money & Markets, Catherine will cover the latest events in finance and politics. E-mail your questions for Ask Catherine or post them at the Money & Markets commentary for the third week of February when it is posted.
Please join us for the interview with Frédéric Pierucci on February 18th.
Talk to you then!
Related Reading:
Book review of The American Trap by Frédéric Pierucci, with Matthieu Aron.
Frédéric Pierucci’s company website: IKARIAN
Very good synopsis of the identity of ‘who’ is ‘mr. global.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNxch41Orzk&t=39s
There was a meeting today between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Biden.
One of the items discussed was the detention of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor by China in retaliation for Canada serving a U.S. arrest warrant on Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
Biden was quoted as saying “Human beings are not bartering chips. We’re going to work together until we get their safe return”.
The hypocrisy is amazing. After hearing Frédéric Pierucci’s story, perhaps someone should tell Biden to pass along this same message to the FPCA lawyers in the US Department of Justice.
My husband doctor’s nurse called last year, during lockdown, asking why his records show him hospitalized in Cedars Sinai in April. All his records go through a single private doctor whom he pays an extra fee so they feel responsible for his affairs and show up whenever he is in a hospital. And suddenly they found a record of hospitalization that she didn’t oversee. But she transferred her database to the largest Los Angeles hospital in 2016. Since 2013-2016 private doctors were obligated to digitize handwritten records, and pass them to the state hospitals for safekeeping. For the supposed benefit of the patients when they see many doctors at once. She was not happy, it cost her $25K and extra work. They used it to inflate Plandemic numbers by charging his Medicare.
WOW.
Dear Solari:
Yes, Mr. Pierucci’s assessment of the FPCA is correct.
In 1994, I did a Master’s Thesis on the FPCA at Georgetown. Doing research on this Act was difficult because little was written on it then. What I did find, to my surprise, was that then there were very few cases brought against alleged violators, less than a dozen as I recall. Yet. the ‘scary’ threat of this Act was much hyped in biz school. What I did note in reviewing the cases adjudicated then was that they did seem to be politically motivated. I recall being further disgusted by our government for the unfair prosecution under FCPA and that one could be caught up as a ‘violator’ for the most minute infraction & that so much was subject to interpretation.
My regrets to Mr. Pierucci for his persecution.
Sincerely,
Virginia Curry, JD, MIM
Thanks for saying that Virginia. If you have not heard the interview with Howard Root in the Library – the name is Cardiac Arrest, you may find that one of interest as well.