thumb|The complete text of the French Court of Auditors report, published in the Libération newspaper on January 4, 1984.

The Great Oil Sniffer Hoax was a 1979 scandal involving French oil company Elf Aquitaine. The company spent millions of dollars developing a new gravity wave-based oil detection system, which was later revealed to be a scam. Elf lost over $150 million in the hoax. In France, the scandal is known as the "Avions Renifleurs" ("Sniffer Planes").

Prior to Elf

Aldo Bonassoli, a telephone-company electrician in Ventimiglia in Italy, invented a new type of desalination system. In 1965, Belgian Count Alain de Villegas became interested in the idea and later said that "We can live without oil, but not without water." When the device did not work as expected, the team turned its attention to a related concept, a "water sniffer" that would find water.

De Villegas was also a member of the Pan-European Union, an anti-communist group headquartered in Brussels. Through contacts in this group, in 1969 he met Jean Violet, a lawyer who worked for the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), the French intelligence agency. Violet, who was an influential behind-the-scenes player in the European anti-communist world, had formed the Pinay Circle in the 1950s around its titular leader, Antoine Pinay.

Violet expressed interest in the water sniffer and agreed to try to find development funding. An attempt to interest Crosby Kelly in New York failed when Kelly stated he would only put up the money if the device was first proven to work. A friend of Violet's, Italian industrialist Carlo Pesenti, showed more interest and agreed to start funding early development. At the time Elf was almost wholly controlled by the government, as were similar companies in other European nations and Canada. Unlike those companies, Elf had little crude oil supply of its own and few known deposits for future commercialization. Elf was in danger of losing its status as a producer, at some point becoming nothing more than another refiner. If the devices could find new sources of oil practically anywhere, as was being claimed, France might remain among the small family of oil-producing European nations. This possibility was so attractive that the official involved overlooked any doubts that were expressed, while also keeping the project completely secret.

Between 30 April and 7 May 1976 the devices were demonstrated for Elf officials, who obliged to Bonassoli's "no scientists" request. The devices, not much larger than a few photocopiers, were installed in a transport plane behind curtains and flown around over known oil fields. Sure enough the device flashed lights, drew lines on the attached TV, and printed paper with a sort of topographical map on it. The map looked almost identical to previously published public exploration reports. The Elf observers, including company founder Pierre Guillaumat, were completely convinced that the devices were real.

In May 1976 Elf signed a 200 million Swiss Franc (US$80 million) contract for a two-year exclusive use while the device was tested. When this contract was complete, a second contract would take over in 1978 for an additional 250 million Francs (US$130 million), expenses not included. This was apparently done without Elf's civilian board of directors being made aware of the project. Further investigation showed that what was inside one cabinet did not simply appear to be a photocopier, but actually was a photocopier. This was the reason the devices' output always looked so similar to previous reports; Bonassoli was hand-copying them, and then simply pressed "copy" to generate output that looked similar, but slightly different, than the originals they had provided. Bonassoli attempted to deflect all criticism by stating that the entire secret of the device was one key component, which was locked in a box that he refused to open. But it was too late, Elf realized it had been hoodwinked.

Even after the hoax was discovered, the government did little to address the problem. Bonassoli managed to successfully return to Italy, where he became something of a folk hero. Elf never completed paying for the final contract, but nevertheless had spent over $150 million in total.

Political scandal

All of France's quasi-public corporations were audited by the Cour des Comptes. In 1979 the magistrate in charge of Elf's audit, François Giquel, asked about the sudden change in certain accounts. These had contained only small amounts of money for many years, around 3 million Francs, and then suddenly grew to hundreds of millions of Francs over the last three years. The President personally informed Giquel that it was a matter of military secrecy, and he was sworn to secrecy. Nothing ever came of the announcement.

References

Notes

Bibliography

  • Robert Hutchinson, Their Kingdom Come – Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, pp. 153–158, Doubleday, 1997,
  • Jean Guisnel, "Als Elf-Erap freudig erbebte", Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German), January 1994
  • Daniel Singer, "AutoWorkers and 'Sniffing Planes'", The Nation, 25 February 1984
  • "Jean Violet", Lobster: The Journal of Parapolitics, Issue 18, 1989
  • "Big Stink", Time, 30 January 1984.
  • Andrew Lloyd, "Bizarre theories of Bonassoli", New Scientist, 19 January 1984
  • "Foes Blame Giscard for Sniffer Plane Scheme", The New York Times, 22 November 1984.
  • R. T. Naylor, Hot Money and the Politics of Debt, pp. 258–261, McGill-Queen's Press, 2004,