LET me start by saying I am not criticising AUKUS or the nuclear submarine deal, which has left the French government with its nose out of joint, at least for the time being.
And note the Department of Defence's answer to my questions this week, saying AUKUS and the submarines are the result of "strategic circumstances . . . and . . . competition" in the Indo-Pacific, where "military modernisation is occurring at an unprecedented rate".
And let me highlight the department's statement that it is "not aware" of any information in relation to the submarine contract, on the subject I am about to relate.
But the subs deal came just days after I'd finished reading The American Trap, by Frenchman Frederic Pierucci.
I bought it, remaindered for $10, just before lockdown. Co-written with French journalist Matthieu Aron, Pierucci chronicles the takeover of the French company Alstom by America's venerable General Electric, and shows, once again, that the surface story is not necessarily "the truth" in business or politics.
In 2012, Pierucci was made global president of Alstom's boiler division, which sold and installed gas-fired power station equipment around the world.
He inherited responsibility for Alstom's half of a $US118-million boiler contract in Sumatra, signed in 2005.
In April 2013, on one of his "many" trips to the US, Pierucci was arrested by the FBI on touchdown at New York's JFK Airport and accused of bribery under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).
The charges related to $US600,000 in payments on the Sumatra deal. As the book makes clear (and as the US Department of Justice eventually acknowledged), Pierucci did not personally bribe anyone, nor did he personally profit outside of his Alstom remuneration.
Like virtually every big company, Alstom used "consultants - middlemen - who would smooth the wheels politically.
Although other Alstom executives were involved, Pierucci became the 'fall guy" for the case, and was threatened, at one stage, with 125 years in jail.
He would serve more than two years, including 14 months maximum security.
In prison, Pierucci began to see his arrest and detention as being part of a much bigger story: that Alstom was still in financial difficulties and a sale to US giant General Electric was in the offing.
Alstom also played a major role in France's railway and nuclear power industries but its CEO at the time, Patrick Kron, argued the company had no choice, financially, and that national security issues could be managed.
Pierucci came to believe he was being held by the US as a pawn in the takeover negotiations.
He learned that GE and the justice department were sharing information at the time of the takeover, and that America's National Security Agency was conducting "commercial espionage": the very thing that outraged the US when others did it.
With the takeover still being negotiated, Alstom pleaded guilty in December 2014 and was fined $US772 million for bribes totalling $US75 million in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Bahamas.
The American Trap quotes French MP Daniel Fasquelle as saying: "The takeover by General Electric was a convenient way for Alstom to extricate itself from the legal trap set for it by the US judiciary."
This is not ancient history.
Pierucci says a parliamentary inquiry that reported in January 2019 found the government had commissioned a report into "the pros and cons of a change of shareholder" in Alstom in October 2012, well before the sale to GM was announced, which he takes as evidence of advance, high-level warning of "what was being concocted".
More broadly, Pierucci and other European investigators say the US uses the foreign corruption laws to "conduct underground economic warfare in the guise of the global fight against corruption and terrorism".
Pierucci says the US has "destabilised" Europe's largest multinationals, targeting their senior managers, jailing them if necessary and netting billions of dollars in fines by coercing the companies to plead guilty.
He says 30 corporations have paid fines of more than $US100 million to the US since 2008: 16 European (including five French, three German, two British) and seven American.
SUBMARINE FALLOUT THIS WEEK:
- Labor questions Australia's 'strategic independence'
- Australia firm on French 'anger'
- Germany warns of lost trust in subs deal
- Australia reacts China's submarine 'anger'
- NZ says Aussie nuclear subs 'not welcome'
Pierruci finds one point in favour of US justice over its French counterpart, and that's in transparency.
He says the mass of detail published online by the justice department has allowed him to build his systemic picture of the way the foreign corruption law is allegedly misused.
Taking his lead, I have had a cursory look through the Foreign Corruption Practices Act website and it's a treasure trove of information, with details of every case, including key documents, since the Act took force in 1977.
As Pierucci learned to his cost, you don't even have to be a US citizen to fall foul of America's reach: you simply have to set foot on its soil.
All that's needed is for the transaction to be conducted in US dollars, which makes a very big net, regardless of country.
As I said at the outset, this has no direct connection to the subs, beyond the involvement of France.
But the Alstom saga is one reason why European attitudes towards the US are rarely as laudatory as ours.
