The United States is using its law to drain the coffers and strategic information of French and European companies: this is the message that Frédéric Pierucci wanted to reiterate on Monday June 24, at the Quai Branly museum in Paris. The former manager of an Alstom division was one of the last speakers at the “USI 2024” conference. The one who was a collateral victim of the “Alstom affair” returned to the way in which Washington uses its laws to defend the interests of American companies and the State.
The story, told in his book The American Trap, began in 2013. At the time, the French industrial flagship had three sectors of activity: the construction of all types of power plants (electric, hydraulic, nuclear), electricity transmission, and rail transport. Alstom « had the ambition, for the electricity production part, to ally with the Chinese to become world number 1 », recalls the former executive, now head of a legal compliance consulting company, Ikarian.
Americans did not want Alstom to merge with a Chinese company
Problem: Americans, ” did not want, in fact, Alstom to merge with a Chinese company. If we had succeeded in this agreement, we would have had to equip about half of the power plants in the world. Can you imagine the power of a company that supplies such equipment? ” he asks.
Washington then used the law, and in particular extraterritorial laws, to achieve its ends, he continues. In April 2013, the former official went to the United States to work with his teams, as he does regularly. But this time, he reports, ” The door of the plane opened, and five FBI agents were waiting for me. They said, Mr. Pierucci, you are under arrest. “. The shock was brutal, he remembers. “ It’s Sunday night, you’re handcuffed to the wall at FBI headquarters. In front of you are two people: the attorney general of the Department of Justice, which is the American Department of Justice, and an FBI agent. ».
He was asked to “play the mole for the FBI”
The former executive learns that Alstom is under investigation by the authorities across the Atlantic for having violated the American anti-corruption law, which is called the ” Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) “. In question, a small contract won ten years earlier, in 2003, in Indonesia, for which a division of Alstom paid a commercial intermediary. The latter, for his part, allegedly paid a bribe to an Indonesian official to win the deal. At the time, Frédéric Pierucci was the commercial director. Even if it was not he who personally paid the bribe, and he had no knowledge of it, he is held responsible.
He was then asked to cooperate with the American justice system, “ by playing the mole for the FBI, within Alstom “, he specifies. The manager refuses. He remained in prison for several months, and was not released until months later. During the procedure, he details, he discovered “ recordings made by other moles in the company – all of American or English nationality ». « If you are American and you have the FBI asking you to play the mole inside your own company, you have no choice. It is as if you were Russian and you had the FSB asking you to spy inside your company. Obviously, you will say yes. On the American side, it is exactly the same thing. », he confides on stage.
“Extraterritoriality means that the Americans have authorized themselves to apply their laws to the rest of the world”
During his incarceration, the former executive understands that the United States is using its extraterritorial law to destabilize Alstom. The goal is to force its CEO to sell the company to its American competitor, General Electric. It took a long time, they put me in prison, and the American authorities only released me the week the French government accepted the principle of the sale, in 2014 “, he emphasizes.
Where does this extraterritorial law come from? “ Extraterritoriality means that the Americans have basically authorized themselves to apply their laws to the rest of the world. “. The United States is far from being the first to act in this way. “ From the moment you are militarily dominant, you try to impose your right “, explains the former head of Alstom, who elaborates: “ The Romans did it, Napoleon did it, the English did it, except now it’s the Americans. ».
There are actually two reporting channels for any transaction between you and your customers “The first is the dollar: from the moment you use the American dollar, even between countries that have nothing to do with the United States, you come under the control of American extraterritorial law, the FCPA. « Same thing if at some point in your transaction there is a bank in the United States “, he adds. The second channel of connection is digital. From the moment you use ” American digital tools, in your transactions, in your emails, if you negotiate a contract via Teams, the FCPA may apply », warns Frédéric Pierucci.
Two thirds of the fines are paid by European companies
And the problem is that the United States has the means to enforce this law. This is because after the Cold War, intelligence agencies were reoriented towards economic warfare. “ And we speak with intelligence people, They will say that about 60% of the resources of the 16 American intelligence agencies are dedicated to economic intelligence. », explains the fifty-year-old.
The law that prohibits companies from paying bribes abroad to win contracts appeared in the United States in 1977, after a corruption scandal across the Atlantic. Although it initially only concerned American companies, from 1998 onwards it also applied to foreign (and therefore European) companies. With an exponential increase in the fines paid: “en 2005, nearly 10 million dollars were collected under the aegis of this law. In recent years, these anti-corruption fines have risen to $6 billion in fines ” notes the former director of Alstom.
Add to this the fact that European companies are particularly targeted. Two thirds of the fines are paid by companies from the Old Continent. They are not going to target the Chinese or the Russians, no, they are going to target the major competitors of American companies first. So European companies like Airbus, Total, Alstom, but also English, Italian, German companies “, lists Frédéric Pierucci.
In addition to this anti-corruption law, massive espionage
Then comes the scandal revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. We learn that the NSA was working with a hundred digital companies, “ the Gafam but not only “, who was asked to spy massively on European companies and citizens. In some areas of activity, the emails, conversations of these companies, their research topics, their proposals, their offers, their strategies have been targeted. »…
« By accepting these requests from intelligence agencies, these companies have violated numerous French and European laws on data protection and business secrecy. But have you seen a single investigation, a single lawsuit against these hundreds of American digital companies who have been extracting your data for years? », questions Frédéric Perucci. Who answers in the negative.
The Cloud Act, the FISA Act and… zero response from Europe
The United States then passed the Cloud Act in 2018. The goal is to say ” that from the moment you store your data on a Cloud provided by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, therefore an American company, and you are under investigation, these companies are obliged to transfer your data to the United States. Then there were other American laws (FISA law) and zero response from Europe. So yes, we will talk about the DSA, the DMA, but that will not prevent the Americans from applying their laws ».
Also read: The United States finally extends the FISA law by 2 years: the American secret services will be able to continue to spy on us until 2026
Faced with these extra-territorial legislations, Europe has remained divided. “ There has been no European unity on this issue. Germany has done nothing, Berlin considers that it is a tax that they are paying to the Americans to continue working with the Chinese and the Russians. before the war in Ukraine“The Italians, the French, the English and the Chinese reacted by passing laws to try to protect themselves from this American extraterritoriality. “. In France, for example, we have the Sapin II law, a French anti-corruption law which allows French companies to negotiate a fine with the national financial prosecutor’s office and escape criminal conviction, in exchange for their confession.
Tips to better protect yourself from these laws
« But beyond that, the state is not going to be able to protect you, it is up to you to protect yourself as a business. », Specifies Frédéric Pierucci, who founded Ikarian, a legal compliance consulting firm. How ? By being less naive, he continues. And starting with “ avoid the dollar.”
But above all, “ think twice before using American digital tools “, he adds. When you have an alternative that is not American, take this French sovereign alternative. There are French tools that work very well to replace Teams. As for your sensitive data, do not store it at Google, Amazon, etc. Identify it, and put it in truly sovereign clouds. All your board discussions, sales discussions, your R&D projects, etc., stop doing them under Teams. All the people who are CIOs, you are the ones keeping the house “, he insists. If you don’t, your business will be open to the four winds ».
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