France doesn’t know it, but we are at war with the US. … Yes, the Americans are hard-nosed, they are voracious, they want unilateral global dominance. It is an unknown war, an ongoing war, with no apparent deaths and yet a war to the death.
A Frenchman called Frédéric Pierucci, with co-author journalist Matthieu Aron, has recently published a book titled Le Piège Américain (The American Trap).
It is a real thriller, with a not very happy ending. There are no dead bodies, albeit there is a significant corporate murder. But before the resolution comes the nightmare.
A Frenchman savors the pleasure of American incarceration
On 14 April 2013, Pierucci is arrested at JFK airport after an exhausting flight from his home in Singapore. Immediately chained, he is herded to FBI headquarters in Manhattan, where he is grilled by an arrogant youngish prosecutor named David Novick. This first encounter will reflect standard practice – nobody is interested in what Pierucci has to say. He is already guilty, though of exactly what will vary at prosecutorial discretion.
Pierucci is soon carted off, in chains, to the high security prison Wyatt in Rhode Island. On 12 June 2014, fourteen months later, he is finally released on bail. But what is his crime?
Pierucci was then head of a subdivision of Alstom Power. Alstom, and its previous incarnations, was a French industrial flagship in (amongst other domains) power generating equipment and in…