This announcement comes only two days after that concerning another close friend of the Monegasque sovereign. Laurent Anselmi, chief of staff to Prince Albert II, an eminently strategic position in the Principality, will leave his post at the end of the month, a source close to the palace said on Thursday, confirming information from Monaco-Morning. On Tuesday, the administrator of Crown assets, Claude Palmero, had already left his post, officially to assert his retirement rights.
These departures come as Monaco has been shaken since the end of 2021 by anonymous denunciations orchestrated by a website called Les Dossiers du Rocher. According to this platform, there is collusion between several relatives of the Prince, including, in addition to Laurent Anselmi and Claude Palmero, Thierry Lacoste, the Prince’s lawyer, and Didier Linotte, President of the Supreme Court.
Against the background of the real estate war
The accusations of this site are based on the hacking of the mailboxes of the interested parties, who have all filed a complaint and deny having set up any system of collusion for their benefit. An investigation into the hacking of their e-mails was opened by the French justice after their complaints.
The victims of the Dossiers du Rocher suspect the Pastor group, led by Patrice Pastor, a powerful entrepreneur excluded from certain markets, of being behind this destabilization operation, against the backdrop of a war between several groups for the flourishing local real estate construction market. He defends himself fiercely.
He keeps other missions
Laurent Anselmi will however retain his mission as Secretary General of the Chancellery of the Orders of the Crown. He is also entrusted with the management of the Academy of the Sea, a research and teaching institute focused on the Mediterranean set up in partnership with the Paca Region and which should open at the start of the school year.
Before taking over as head of the Prince’s cabinet in January 2022, this Monegasque born in 1962, a lawyer by training, had been Minister of Justice and then Minister of External Relations. He had also been one of the prince’s advisers in the 2000s. Laurent Anselmi is also president of the International Court of Appeal of the International Automobile Federation (FIA).
In January 2022, his appointment as chief of staff was interpreted as the desire to introduce more transparency and rigor in the awarding of public contracts in the Principality. The name of his successor is not known.