The shady traveler

For many years and especially just after the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, Alain Vivien was to infiltrate key positions which were later to perfectly serve the arms dealers as well as operations linked to the secret service and other “higher interests of the State”.

First of all, he was to join the World Federation of Twinned Towns and became assistant President of The French Association for United Cities. This international organization, abundantly subventioned by the Ministry of Overseas Co-Operation was founded just after the Second World War by an ex-prisoner of war Jean-Marie Bressant, in a utopian effort to establish trans-national connections of fraternity and solidarity between the communities and peoples of the world in order that individuals get to know each other better and thus avoid making war on each other. Nevertheless, we know that certain individuals and in particular Alain Vivien, used the connections that this organization had forged with Third World countries over the years in order to justify certain contacts and strengthen certain friendships.

At the same period, he became one of the important members of another association : The International Association for Communal Promotion (or APCI). This organization, which was initially founded for the training of the officials needed by the Third World, was fairly rapidly diverted from its objective, to become a center for discreet meetings between right and left-wing parties in order to co-ordinate sensitive issues involving the whole political scene.

Notably, amongst its members we find Guy Penne, François Mitterand’s former adviser for African and Madagascar affairs, Georges Lemoine, former Secretary of State for Defense or the centrist Senator Jacques Pelletier.

Being an elected representative, it was easy for Alain Vivien to integrate the FAC (Fund to Help Co-Operation), a fund designed to assist countries qualifying under the post-colonization co-operation agreements. As we will see in another article, this fund enabled the financing of a certain number of discreet operations by using the granting of subventions to specific associations, including APCI for a total of 25 million francs, without requesting any documentary proof of its use.