Boris Boillon was arrested on July 31 at Paris’s Gare du Nord station
writes
France 24 (merci à Hervé), as the former French ambassador
attempted to board a train to
Brussels carrying more than 350,000 Euros in cash,
it emerged on Friday.
It seems like a spectacular fall from grace for a
man who enjoyed such 
an illustrious political
career. Fluent in Arabic, he served as his country’s
ambassador in both Iraq and Tunisia. Former Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi referred to him as “my son,”
and ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, for whom he
worked as an advisor, affectionately called him “my
little Arab”.
Boillon was stopped by customs as part of a routine
check, according to the French investigative website
Mediapart, which broke the story. When asked if he
had any currency on him, the ex-diplomat said
nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Euros in
his bag. A major faux-pas considering that French
law requires all people entering or leaving the
country to declare any sum of money equal to or
exceeding the amount of 10,000 Euros.
Boillon’s bag was subsequently searched, and lo and
behold, it was stuffed with envelopes of cash.
A simple explanation?
The 43-year-old said that the cash was payment for
past consulting work, which he claims nets him
around 500,000 Euros per year.
“It’s money that I made this year in Iraq from
the services I provide to Iraqi companies,” Boillon
said, according to an excerpt of his testimony
obtained by Mediapart. “Because Iraq lacks a
developed banking system,www.ekurd.net
these companies wired me the cash to Paris.”
See also:
the French consulate chauffeur in Jerusalem caught with 150 kilos of gold bars
