PARIS: Isabelle Prevost-Desprez, the French magistrate charged with investigating a billion dollar money-laundering scheme between France and Israel, is expected shortly to be removed from her position because, in the eyes of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, she has shown too much zeal in doing her job.

The no-nonsense judge, according to French judicial sources, is scheduled soon to be “promoted” to the position of vice- president of the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Creteil, a city located on the outskirts of Paris, effectively taking away from her an investigation which had allowed her since 1998 to demonstrate the way Israel made use of French banks and companies located in the garment district of Paris to funnel billions of dollars to Israeli interests.

On Sept 10, In a letter published in French daily Le Monde, Mrs Prevost-Desprez complained that she’d been deprived of the means with which to pursue her investigation into the money- laundering scheme between France and Israel.

She also warned at the time that if she didn’t receive more means with which to continue her inquest, she’d “have to put an end soon” to her investigation, effectively allowing the practice — which is costing French banks, companies and individuals thousands of millions of dollars — to continue unabated.

Only last week, she was attacked for her zealousness and independence in a book — Banquier, la Juge et le Truand [Banker, the Judge and the Truant, Editions Jean-Claude Lattes, Paris — written by Francois-Xavier de Fournas, one of the principal intermediaries implicated in the money-laundering scheme.

As a result of the book, the French judicial establishment, which finds its independence increasingly threatened by the government of Prime Minister Raffarin, decided to close ranks behind her and publicly complain of the way Mrs Prevost-Desprez, a respected jurist who has always refused to allow her work to be influenced by political considerations, has been systematically hampered in her attempts to effectively do her job.

French judges again took up arms this weekend to complain of the way French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy openly called into question the decision rendered on Dec 5 by a French Judge to order the release from detention of 44 Romanian DPs, who had been illegally rounded up at a Gypsy encampment at Noisy-le-Roi early last week, and were scheduled to be expelled back to Bucarest.

The magistrates complained not only of the way the police raid was undertaken — some judges compared it to the “rafles” which were used during the German occupation of Paris in 1940-44 to round up Jews who were subsequently deported to Auschwitz — but also about Sarkozy’s flagrant calling into question of the legal decision when he noted that French judges were “complicating his job.”

Last August, a month before her letter to Le Monde, Mrs Prevost-Desprez warned the government that the in spite of all her efforts to curb the money-laundering scheme, that the practice had effectively been allowed to go on, and this in spite of repeated promises by the French government that it wanted to put a halt to the scheme which had been taking an important toll on the economy of France at a time when Raffarin’s government was already having problems coming up with much-needed additional sources of revenue.

Her threat was largely inspired by the important reorganization of French police services that Interior Minister Sarkozy had then initiated, and Sarkozy’s decision that the police services specializing in the investigation of financial flows in general and of money-laundering in particular should eventually lose much of their manpower and their funding.

“Without the assistance provided by these specialized services,” wrote Mrs Prevost-Desprez, “there is no way in which I can continue to undertake my investigation.”

When representatives of French banks like Societe Generale and Barclays France were indicted for their alleged role in the scheme, they immediately let it be known they had taken measures designed to halt the practice, at least as far as they were concerned -- a decision which usually took the form of a refusal to accept for deposit any cheques emanating from Israel and notably from the banks already indicted for having taken part in the scheme.