FREEMASON GEORGES MANTELLO'S MONOPOLY MONEY
In the two previous posts, we have view a series of Permindex documents from the Louis Bloomfield Archives kept at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). They showed us that, beside Bloomfield, Montreal attorney Stanley Vineberg, from the Phillips, Bloomfield, Vineberg and Goodman law office, and French bankers Edmund Rothschild and François Pereire were related to Permindex real estate deals that took place in 1959. Those papers also gave us the details of this dealing that consist in the acquisition by the Permindex syndicate of lands from Countess Calvi, a member of the Savoy Royal family, who was represented by Carlo d’Amelio, a director of Centro Mondiale Commerciale. Finally, the last post also demonstrated that the relations between Montreal lawyer Louis M. Bloomfield and Italian Georges Mantello, a 33rd degree Freemason that was Permindex’s acting director, weren’t always harmonious.
But, whatever was the gravity of the October 1959 altercation reported in the previous post, Bloomfield and Mantello kept working together on Permindex and other financial deals for the years to come. And, like we will see below, the two men had for project the formation of a Venezuelan corporation with a capital of nothing less than 10 millions dollars, an amount that, in 1959’s dollars, was the equivalent of 75 millions of today’s money..
As we’ve seen earlier, on October 20th 1959 Louis Bloomfield wrote to Joseph Slifka, a New-York businessman interested to buy shares of Permindex, and expressed his dissatisfaction with the way Mantello was conducting business. Two days later, on October 22, Bloomfield cabled to Georges Mantello a message where his dismay is again evident. In a telegraphic formulation, Bloomfield wrote: “Mantello greatly disturbed puzzled tour cable Stop If Seligman not serious pointless my coming Stop cannot understand why telephoning Seligman clarify rendezvous His cable affects your honor.”
The Seligman referred to in this cable was Hans Seligman a Swiss banker head of the Hans Seligman-Schurch & Co investment banking house located in Basel. Seligman and Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian premier and a notorious anti-Communist, were among the initiators of the first attempt to found Permindex on Switzerland soil in 1956. Together, they were members of the board of directors of the CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale. There would be chapters and chapters to write about Seligman and Nagy and their relations to the anti-communist intelligence network. (Those interested can read a text from researcher Lisa Pease at:
http://beyond-the-illusion.com/files/Conspiracy/Assassination/permindex. ) But, to go back to the Bloomfield-Mantello relation, it is interesting to understand the meaning of the phrase “His cable affects your honor” in the above document. In a very diplomatic language, Louis Bloomfield is telling Georges Mantello that information from Seligman’s cable contradict Mantello, and this formulation is just a step before telling flatly to Mantello that he’s a liar. Again, this kind of tense exchange shows that Louis Bloomfield shouldn’t per se be seen as the supreme commander of Permindex, and that Georges Mantello was directing it on its own will.
But whatever tension exists between Bloomfield and Mantello, the two men didn’t stop doing business together. In fact, the day following the above cable, on October 23, Louis Bloomfield sent to the Mantellos a $57,000 USD draft and the following agreement guaranteeing his brothers in law’s participation in Marina Reale, Corporation, a Panamean company that was holding sea front lands sold through Permindex. The brothers in law were Moe and Max Pascal, and according to the agreement, their $57,000 down deposit was representing 40% of a total participation that would totalize $142,500 USD. And this total amount was only a 7 ½ interest in Marina Reale which total capitalization was thus in the amount of 1,9 million US dollars.
It is of some interest to note here that the two Pascals, Bloomfield’s brothers in law, were the owners of Pascal company, a firm that has an hardware chain of stores in Canada that sold firearms in the domestic market for huntsman but that was also listed in government papers as arms trader. It is also of interest to note that Harry Pascal, Louis Bloomfield’s nephew, later worked for Tibor Rosenbaum’s BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) and later for the Rothschilds of London. The Pascals agreement above also gives us more insight on Louis Bloomfield’s parts in those complex real estate dealings. The agreement read: “all such shares to be held in escrow by Mr Bloomfield until full payment has been made by all the participants.”
This detail clarifies the reason why Louis Bloomfield, at the time of the Garrison investigation, was described as “the major shareholder of Permindex for parties unknown”. As an intermediate between real estate sellers and buyers, and as the architect of complex corporate structures extending from Italy to Panama and Venezuela and passing through France, Canada and United States, Bloomfield was also acting as a clearing house holding in escrow Permindex and Marina Reale’s shares up to the closing of transaction, that is up to the moment when the full payments and documentations of those deals are completed.
Another document, a November 26th 1959 letter from Louis Bloomfield to Hans Seligman gives more precision on the Montreal lawyer’s relation to Permindex. In it, Bloomfield wrote: “I did not purchase, for my group, the 10% or Permindex shares referred to in your letter. These were to be placed at my disposal on behalf of my clients against future acquisition.”
It is somewhat interesting to note that even Hans Seligman, the Swiss banker, had trouble to understand who was owning what part of Permindex. But this letter also gives us a hint that Bloomfield himself didn’t possess a definitive perception of what was happening. He wrote: “Therefore, pending further clarification of the entire Permindex picture, I cannot recognize the statement set out in your letter.”
Another Bloomfield’s letter, sent one week before the one sent to Seligman, illustrates how much the Montreal lawyer is kept in the dark about details of the businesses conducted in Italy by Georges Mantello. Four months after the July 17 letter in which he asked if he should go ahead with the formation of a Canadian corporation issuing for 26 millions Bolivars of debentures and when they will go to Venezuela (see previous post for the original letter), on November 19th, 1959, Louis Bloomfield wrote Mantello to “confirm our telephone conversation that you want the debentures issued in United States Dollars instead of in Bolivars.” The headline of this letter refers to a “Canada Venezitalo Realty Investments Limited” company, that is in all evidence the name of the Canadian corporation that Bloomfield created for Mantello, but there exist no trace of this society in the Canadian government registers or on the internet.
This letter also demonstrates that this change of mind about the currency to use is a last minute one and that it occurred after Bloomfield had the Bolivars debentures printed and that he now need to have them destroyed. What is most interesting is to read the listing of the debentures to be printed. As mentioned by Bloomfield, they add up to a total of 2200 certificates and, even if Bloomfield didn’t gave this precision, their combined value totalizes 10 millions US dollars, an amount that in 1959 dollars would represent 75 millions in 2010 money.
Well, it is not only quite surprising to see that a corporation issuing for such an important amount of debentures could be created from scratches, but there is some questions to be asked about the seriousness of its director who, overnight, decided to have this amount of certificates issued in US dollars instead of Bolivars. One of the questions to ask is the following: “Is Mantello, the 33rd degree Freemason behind Permindex, really at the head of a financial empire and he is really in the capacity to make such important last minute decision? Or is he only a conman?” Since, through the work of eminent lawyers like Louis Bloomfield and Stanley Vineberg, he was able to associate in his deals bankers like Edmund Rothschild, François Pereire and Hans Seligman and many businessmen like New Yorker Joseph Slifka, and that on a long period of time, we can exclude the possibility that Mantello’s dealing were just fraud. But still, since there subsist no tangible trace of Mantello’s financial empire, --that is no public trail of an organisation that reunite corporations with such ambitious names as Centro Mondiale Commerciale and Permindex (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), along with Marina Reale, that had a capitalization of 1,9 million USD (in 1959), and this last intercontinental corporation named Venezitalo Realty Investments Limited with its 10 millions US dollars debentures-- one has to wonder if Mantello’s multinational empire wasn’t of an underground type, more related to secret intelligence or organized crime than to official international business. Again, we should keep in mind that if it wasn’t for the accusations linking Permindex and CMC to the JFK assassination, those two international corporations would today be non-entities unknown from the public.
For its part, Louis Bloomfield had his own questions to ask. In his letter, he wrote: “Why so many certificates? Would it not be easier to have them, say, in denominations of $100,000. $50,000. $25,000. $10,000. $5,000. and $1,000 as we had agreed upon for the Bolivars debentures?” There is no trace of Mantello answer to this question in the available Bloomfield archives. But what comes in mind when we consider Bloomfield’s question is that Mantello’s debentures look more like an exchange currency, some kind of convenient Monopoly money, than certificates of investment. So one has to ask: if it is not to play Monopoly, for what game is intended this new discreet currency put at the disposition of an Italian 33rd degree Freemason? Secret intelligence operations financing? Contraband deals, including arms or drug deals?
Well for now, we don’t know a lot about the Mantello’s activities and intentions. And —what is the most important thing—we can clearly see that Louis Bloomfield neither is aware of Georges Mantello’s plan. Again, this kind of information should be remember to those who concluded that Bloomfield was the chief of Permindex and the engineer of the JFK assassination just because he was holding a majority of Permindex’s shares on behalf of others.
Whatever was the role of Permindex in regard of JFK assassination, and whatever was the part Bloomfield played in CMC and Permindex, the Louis M. Bloomfield archives, held at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, clearly show that the characterisation of the Montreal lawyer as the chief master of the JFK assassination was a false conclusion and an exaggeration. It is, in all evidence, to clear his name in this matter and establish the historic facts that Louis Bloomfield donated his papers to the Canadian Public Archives. And again, Library and Archives Canada not only affects the honour of its donator but is dishonouring itself by refusing to fulfill its commitment toward him and by keeping secret part of those archives against Bloomfield’s will.
