Denis Robert

Denis Robert (born 9 May 1958) is a French investigative journalist, novelist and filmmaker.

He formerly worked for twelve years for the newspaper Libération.

Robert's books, films and press interviews, denouncing the Opaque workings of the Clearstream clearing house, earned him into more than 60 lawsuits in France, Belgium and Luxembourg by banks, such as Bank Menatep (a Russian bank) and BGL (BNP Paribas Fortis), as well as the Clearstream company.

After starting a fanzine Santiag in Lorraine in 1982, he joined the editorial staff of the monthly magazine Actuel, where he worked for a year.

At the end of 1983, he joined Libération as a journalist, first as a correspondent in Eastern France.

He was then transferred to cover financial and political affairs in the society department.

By this time he had already published two novels, Chair Mathilde in 1991 and Je ferai un malheur in 1994.

He resigned in 1995 to focus on his own writing work.

But the general public only got acquainted with him in early 1996 with his essay Pendant les affaires, les affaires continuent.

Also in 1996, Robert gathered seven anti-corruption magistrates to start the Appel de Genève (Geneva Appeal), to create a European judicial area to fight financial crime more effectively.

The Appel de Genève is the subject of a book La Justice ou le Chaos, published the same year.

It was followed by a dozen novels and by as many essays on investigations of the multinational finance company Clearstream.

In late 1997, Robert planned to denounce the consequences of what he calls "the machine" (the capitalist economic system) for the poorest.

In Portrait de groupe avant démolition, Robert presented and illustrated a collection of street photographs of homeless persons taken by one of their own, René Taesch.

In addition to his books, Robert has directed and co-directed five documentary films, one for cinema with the cineast Philippe Harel, Journal intime des affaires en cours (1998) and later four others for television : Le cahier (1999), Les Dissimulateurs (2001), Histoire clandestine (2002), L’affaire Clearstream racontée à un ouvrier de chez Daewoo (2003).

He was also the writer of successful novels: Happiness (Original title : Le bonheur), an erotic book written in 2000 and translated into 14 languages; Une ville, published in 2004, which was adapted as a TV series; and La domination du mode, which appeared in 2006.

The same year, he also published a novel on football Le milieu du terrain which resulted in several lawsuits, and an investigative book, Clearstream, l’enquête; the latter is very rare, because its sale was prohibited and it was removed from bookstores for almost a month.

In February 2001, the book Révélation$ came out and had an explosive effect.

Robert held Cedel International (now known as Clearstream) responsible for being one of the major platforms for concealing financial transactions on a worldwide scale.

He continued to condemn them by co-producing a movie Les Dissimulateurs with Pascal Lorent, as part of Canal+’s investigation show 90 minutes.

Business journalists were either in disbelief or hostile to it, while some others were just unsure, perhaps because Clearstream was threatening them with endless lawsuits.

The movie gained success among the alter-globalization movement.

The parliamentary commission on money laundering, chaired by Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg, took up the revelations and summoned witnesses, all of whom confirmed what the author had written.

Under pressure, a judicial inquiry was opened in Luxembourg.

The CEO of Clearstream, André Lussi, a Swiss banker, was laid off and Clearstream was quickly purchased, for a large sum, by the Deutsche Börse Group.

Deutsche Börse had been waiting a long time to acquire this clearing house, which allowed it to control the European markets from start to finish.

Deutsche Börse compensated André Lussi, but still maintained the lawsuits against Robert (hiring Charlie Hebdo's attorney Richard Malka, among others).

In light of those developments, Robert wrote a second novel, La Boite Noire, and a second movie, broadcast by Canal+, l'Affaire Clearstream racontée à un ouvrier chez Daewoo.

In late 2006, in collaboration with a painter friend, Robert published an art book, Dominations : 'étrange objet de peinture et de littérature, in parallel with a contemporary art exhibition in Paris.

In 2008, he was involved in a polemic with Philippe Val (former director of the magazine Charlie Hebdo) and journalist Edwy Plenel in relation to the Clearstream affair.

In 2009 he published Dunk, a social science fiction novel.

He is also the author of a successful four-volume comic strip, L’affaire des affaires.

Just after the Appel de Genève, Robert investigated the multinational Clearstream, which at that time was unknown to the general public.

He met Ernest Backes, one of the founding managers of this international clearing house.

Robert led the investigation for two years.

Régis Hempel, the firm's vice-president and a former IT manager, explained that one of his tasks was to delete any trace of sensitive transactions.

Three months before the publication of his book Révélation$, Robert sent a series of registered letters in which he sought explanations from Clearstream's management and from the banks under investigation.

On 3 February 2011, after ten years of litigation, Robert was cleared by the Court of Cassation of his conviction for both of his books Révélation$ and La Boîte noire, as well as for his documentary film Les Dissimulateurs.

Robert is also a painter, whose work is displayed in Paris art galleries.

Robert studied psychology and obtained a Master of Advanced Studies in psycholinguistics.