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. . . HOME JPK Update takes today's headlines from leading news sites, most in French, just a few in English, about a Tahiti scandal that started out as an allegation of assassination and continues, to this day, to ensnare a widening ring of global figures. Most significant, former French president Jacques Chirac, alleged to have held roughly US$70 million inside a Tokyo bank set up by the family of a protege, former president of French Polynesia, Gaston Flosse. Disgraced United States investor Bernard Madoff - accused of spiriting away US$50 billion, the biggest fraud in court history - is another well known name emerging in links with Clearstream, a clearing bank. A kind of bank-for-banks, Clearstream officially acts exclusively as an independent check on transactions between banks. Allegations emerging in 2001 saw Clearstream accused of opening secret accounts for some of the world's biggest banks, as well as for private individuals and other "non-banks." Jean-Pasc...