An octogenarian from Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort, ex-barbouze of the Gaullist networks, claims to virtually own a colossal fortune: the Yamashita Treasure, gold collected by the Japanese imperial army during the Second World War. His story is crazy. Hang in there.
The story is crazy. Christian Gibelin-Boyer, 81, says he has been robbed of a gigantic fortune. This retiree from Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort (Gard) is a billionaire. At least on paper: $130 billion, taken from the Yamashita Treasury, 12,000 tons of gold stored by the Japanese Imperial Army in Philippine caves and tunnels during World War II.
In the entrance hall of his villa transformed into an office, Christian Gibelin does not budge. This money is his. With his thin mustache, he looks like a penniless Don Quixote fighting against the whole world. The vigorous octogenarian, father of five children – the last three are twelve, ten and eight years old – intends to collect his colossal pay before passing the gun to the left.
At the Ganges Public Treasury
On February 17, 2015, the head of the extended investigations department of the French Tax Office, Jean-Patrick Martini, allegedly had the premises of the Public Treasury of Ganges (Hérault) privatized to receive original documents supposed to attest to the authenticity of Christian Gibelin’s bank accounts. Jean-Patrick Martini and one of his colleagues, Brice Tassera, public finance inspector, committed in writing to return the documents within three months… Which was never done, assures Christian Gibelin.
He is told that “the account is authenticated”
He touched his dream in February 2015. “The account is authenticated”then assures him on the telephone the head of the extended investigations department at the National Directorate of Tax Investigations, at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, Jean-Patrick Martini. Information that he would keep “British authorities, they can’t talk bullshit”we hear on the recording that the Gardois took care to make. On the other end of the line, he is jubilant: “I’m speechless, it’s wonderful!“.
A few days later, his interlocutor is in Ganges. At the PMU bar, on the side of the road, “he took out a cigar, drank a whiskey, he does that when he’s happy“. It won’t be long before Gibelin starts to show off. “He told me “We’re going to give you the Legion of Honor and a pension” of €3,000 per month, in exchange for taking back control of the accounts.“. Gibelin laughed in his face. He formalized his refusal by email on May 7.
Jean-Patrick Martini is “one of the best tax agents in the Republic”insists the Swiss daily The morningin 2015: “We nickname him “The Aperitif”, in allusion to his surname, but also to what his passage announces to fraudsters in terms of tax adjustment”.
His name is cited in the so-called Swiss Leaks affair: large-scale tax evasion and money laundering carried out by the HSBC bank from Switzerland. At the center of the game, a troubled computer scientist, seducer, bluffer and poker player, advancing masked under a false name, Hervé Falciani. It is through him that the scandal occurs: he transmits the explosive list to… Jean-Patrick Martini, responsible for recovering the money from French tax evaders. A very good pick for the tax agent. On a corner of a table in a bistro at Nice airport, at the end of December 2008, the informant Hervé Falciani gave a great Christmas present to Martini and the French state: 100,000 names of tax evaders grouped together on five DVDs.
But if the deal worked with Falciani, Martini seems to have come up short with Gibelin… Whom he will not give any more news to.
L’or de Yamashita
Flashback… The Gardois spent a long time dragging his gaiters in Africa, in the networks of the Gaullist security service, the Sac. In 1998, an intermediary contacted him to put him in touch with “the wife and son of a Filipino colonel“. Exiled in the United States, he died of a cardiac arrest in 1990, at the age of 67. The wife and son inherited his accounts, one at JP Morgan, the other at Barclays. This is where things get complicated: in these accounts and in these vaults would be housed… Yamashita’s gold. The Americans would have got their hands on the loot after the war, after asserting that the boat transporting the loot had sunk… to better keep everything, using a pseudonym: the Filipino soldier in the army of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jose Bautista Cruz, “who worked for the CIA“, assure Christian Gibelin-Boyer.
His son and his wife then seek to recover the money. In vain. They offer the Frenchman, accustomed to navigating in troubled waters, to be their agent. The barbouze smells the right move. Money doesn’t smell.
“A car drove over him, backed up, ran over him again and drove away. What do you call that? An accident?“
He makes a first visit to Manila and signs a mandate with the soldier’s wife. But she died shortly after. “We think she was poisoned.” It was finally with the son that he drafted a new agreement, before the Manila court, in June 2000. He was then, officially he said, the agent of the account.
The son died in 2001 when hit by a car. Murder? “A car drove over him, backed up, ran over him again and drove away. What do you call that? An accident?“Christian Gibelin then found himself the sole master on board. “I went to see a contact in Germany who told me “This account exists, but don’t touch it, it’s an atomic bomb.””
He sees real or false agents from the CIA, Mossad and a bunch of intermediaries visibly attracted by the lure of profit coming to him. The most famous of them is Daniel Fernandes Rojo Filho, an investor linked to the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel and a follower of financial scams modeled on the Ponzi pyramid. In a letter of intent, that Free Midday consulted, he proposed to buy the account from Gardois for 400 million dollars in 2014. A trifle. But Gibelin accepts, convinced after so much time that he will not receive more. Patatras. The account in which he was assured that he would receive the money is blocked. Daniel Fernandes Rojo Filho, under arrest warrant, was arrested.
“Maybe it’s worth ten or a hundred times more.”
Is Christian Gibelin-Boyer the turkey in an unfunny prank? Because he did not obtain the signature on the account without compensation. He had paid his son Cruz “around $250,000”. “I helped someone who was in poverty in the Philippines. He entrusted me with everything and I paid him when I received it. It deserved something after all!“
The perseverance of the former barbouze, who claims to have carried Gabonese President Omar Bongo’s suitcases of tickets to French ministers, commands respect. More than 25 years trying to obtain justice and reparation. Thousands of emails addressed to presidents, governments, deputies. To scream in the desert. Especially since the 130 billion, if they exist, have grown since – “Maybe it’s worth ten or a hundred times more.” – with the price of gold… The gold of General Tomoyuki Yamashita. For fifty years, treasure seekers from all over the world have been combing a virtual underground El Dorado. Unless Christian Gibelin-Boyer, also a gold prospector who came up empty-handed, has all of this at his fingertips.
We nicknamed Yamashita “the Malayan tiger“. This is also what Ghibelline was called in Africa. He has a specimen tattooed on his shoulder.
The No comment of Bercy
Free Midday requested the General Directorate of Public Finances, which oversees the extended tax investigations service, with this reaction for any response: “The DGFiP does not communicate on information protected by tax secrecy“. Despite our reminders, at least to obtain confirmation of this written commitment from the tax services at the time, and to discuss the comments made by one of their agents, Jean-Patrick Martini, in a recording that Free Midday was able to listen, the door of the French tax authorities remained desperately closed.
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