| FRANCE: REVOLT
IN THE BIRTHPLACE OF WATER PRIVATIZATION
Privatized water has been well established in France
since the days of Napoleon. By the time then U.K.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President
Ronald Reagan began calling for more privatization,
three large companies already supplied water to
more than half of the French population.
The business of water started with the realization
that there was money to be made delivering it to
places where people needed it the most - homes and
factories.
Suez and Veolia Environnement (formerly
Vivendi Environnement) are France's largest water
companies.
Suez’ roots in the water business
go back to 1822. It now has more than 125 million
customers around the world.
Veolia provides water and wastewater
services to more than 110 million people around
nearly 100 countries. During the nineties, their
revenue from water more than doubled to $12 billion
a year.
Veolia director, Antoine Frérot:
We have 150 years experience.
We are working for between 6 and 7,000 cities in
the world and we get a lot of experience. We could
propose a lot of best practices in water or waste
management to every city in the world. (read
an interview with
Antoine Frerot online)
Both companies are global empires with resources
that can overwhelm most of the municipalities they
do business with.
THE MICHEL INTIMIDATION
Jacques Michel is a former regional director of
Lyonnaise des Eaux (Suez). He retired in 1990 at
the age of 60. Building on his experience negotiating
water contracts at Suez, in 1990 he started his
own consultant firm called Assistance et Contrôle
des Service Public (ACSP). Its business was to advise
cities on their private water and sewage treatment
contracts with a view to getting them a better deal.
His intention was to show that cities were being
overcharged.
In the early 90s, Michel began
advising municipalities in the region of the Var.
This is the region along the Mediterranean that includes
Nice, Cannes, St. Tropez, Toulon and the commune of
St. Maxime. His study of their water agreements revealed
extensive overcharging of as much as 72 per cent.
Most of the waterworks in
this area were/are controlled by a company called
SA Compagnie des Eaux et de l’ozone, an affiliate
of Compagnie Generalé des Eaux (CGE), later
called Vivendi and now Veolia. The regional director
was a man named Régis Calmels.
DIRTY DEALINGS
IN FRANCE
In July 1994, arsonists attempted to burn down Michel’s
home in Béziers, France. While he and his
wife were away, the arsonists poured gasoline under
the side door of his home. The fire roared up an
interior stairwell and, were it not for an alert
neighbor who called the fire department, the entire
house would have been destroyed.
Jacques Michel: My
family was very afraid because we had young grandchildren
at the time.
Calmels decided in the spring of 1994
that Michel’s activities were becoming prejudicial
to his company or, as one witness later said, were
“getting in the way”. A fellow water
executive, Louis Cunnac referred him to Bernard
Cayron, who was the manager of a Paris-based company
called la Société Export Trading Services.
This company specialized in selling “special
equipment” (weapons) to the French ministries
of defence, the interior and justice and also offered
security services. Cayron, a military veteran, had
previously done some contract work for Cunnac and
Vivendi that involved surveillance and screening
for bugs.
In July 1994, Calmels met with Cunnac
and Cayron at the Hôtel St. James in central
Paris where they discussed, as court judgments later
concluded, a plan to intimidate Michel into closing
down his company.
CAUGHT IN THE
TRAIN STATION
Their plans began to unravel on Sept. 1, 1994. On
that day, the French police anti-gang squad received
information from a source that two men planned to
commit a robbery that afternoon. Police set up surveillance
and followed the men to the Gare de Lyon where they
arrested Hervé Jaubert, who had retired in
1993 as a French army captain, and Stéphane
Pommier, also an army veteran.
The two men were carrying two bags
containing wigs, gloves, handcuffs, a roll of tape,
a sawed-off shotgun, a 9mm pistol, shotgun shells,
brass knuckles, sunglasses, a truncheon or blackjack,
smoke and tear gas grenades. They also carried 19,000
francs in bills of 500 francs and two train tickets
to Béziers.
A search of Jaubert’s flat turned
up a loaded Smith and Wesson 357 revolver plus 50
cartridges, a Mossbert 12-gage shotgun, a Remington
pump action shotgun with shells and 2 two-way radios.
Under interrogation, Jaubert eventually
told police that he was on is way to Béziers
to intimidate Jacques Michel on behalf of a client
whose name he claimed not to know. He said that
he had been contracted in July 1994 by his former
employer Cayron to conduct surveillance and intimidate
Michel. His payment would be 40,000 francs cash.
He claimed he hired Pommier to help him because
he is a big intimidating guy. Pommier confirmed
Jaubert’s story.
When Michel was told about the intimidation plot,
he said he did not know why anybody would want to
threaten him. Police asked him what he did for a
living. He told them about his work as an adviser
to cities in the Var on their water contracts. He
said that he had discovered “overbilling”
by the water company.
Police arrested Cayron who originally
denied any knowledge of Michel. But eventually he
admitted that Cunnac had asked him to investigate
Michel. He claimed that on his own initiative he
hired Jaubert to investigate Michel as a business
favor to CGE. He said the two thugs had carried
out surveillance on Michel’s home in July
or August and that he had written a report about
this, which he mailed to Cunnac. He claimed that
that marked the end of the affair and he paid Jaubert
out of his own pocket. Whatever Jaubert and Pommier
were up to on Sept. 1, 1994, was at their own initiative.
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