Barismont

A cartoon of Atticus Moreau which appeared in the Tofino Times during the Barismont scandal

The Barismont scandal was a political corruption scandal involving President of Zamastan Atticus Moreau and the alleged interference of Yuan in his 2020 presidential campaign. The scandal began in October of 2020 when Moreau was cited in leaked documents in a detailed report by the Jade Tribune revealing that he had avoided paying taxes during his term as Governor of Alutia from 2006 to 2016. This led to the discovery that Moreau's aide Robert Berecraft had taken loans from Yuaneze businessmen to support the campaign. Berecraft was found guilty in September 2021 of conspiracy with a foreign government and sentenced to five years in prison. In October 2021, Congressional Hall released a report detailing further allegations that Moreau had personally directed Berecraft, and Attorney General Katelyn Rasse appointed Arthur Aubert as a special prosecutor to investigate the President's actions during the campaign.

Meanwhile, a local investigation in Tofino was launched by district attorney Curt Marchand after it was discovered Moreau's lawyer Francis Bessette paid a hush money settlement to four aides of then-Governor Moreau and had attempted to blackmail a judge to drop pending charges against other Moreau lawyers, which constituted obstruction of justice. While investigations found Moreau had acted unethically and legal challenges were raised against him, he was not found guilty in any prosecutions of breaches of lawful conduct. However, the convictions of Berecraft and Bessette, the revelations of the scandal, as well as continued controversies surrounding the Bettencourt Protests and the Kristina Leach affair tarnished Moreau's reputation and public approval. As a result of the scandals, Moreau declined to run for a second term in the 2022 Zamastan presidential election.

Name

The scandal became known as Barismont after the tax firm Baris and Montpillier which Moreau's lawyers utilized in the transfer of foreign contributions to his campaign.

Scandal

Tax avoidance and foreign contributions

On October 27th, 2020, a Jade Tribune report revealed that then-Governor Moreau had paid a total of Z$5,460 in taxes over his entire ten years as Governor of Alutia from 2006 to 2016. According to the report, which obtained tax records for President Moreau and his political allies over two decades - President Moreau paid little to no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. It added that the president was personally responsible for more than Z$300k in loans, which would come due in the next four years. It did not suggest President Moreau received any previously unknown income from Drambenburg or Zamastanian based companies, though it said that the president had earned some money from foreign sources, and records revealed "chronic losses and years of tax avoidance".

Speaker Natasha Chastain attacked Moreau publically, saying "this president appears to have over Z$300,000 in debt. To whom? Companies? Different countries? What is the leverage they have?" she asked, adding: "So for me, this is a national security question. The fact that you could have a sitting president who owes hundreds of thousands of dollars that he's personally guaranteed to lenders, and we don't know who these lenders are." Chastain also suggested that President Moreau may be indebted to the CEO's of big lender companies and even the Kaiser of Drambenburg, Peter XXI Wettin, whom Moreau has praised in the past. While it was never officially determined who those sources were, previous connections to CEO's of Yuaneze and Drambenburgian companies and senior members of the Drambenburgian government like Chancellor Walde Herzog and Kaiser Wettin were cited as potential lenders.

The president accused the media of bringing up his taxes and "other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent" in a personal blog post, specifically citing the Tofino Times and the Jade Tribune of invasive journalism. He said he had "paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes" but received tax credits as well. Responding to the accusations of losses, President Moreau added he had "very little debt" compared to the value of his assets.

President Moreau faced legal challenges prior to the presidency for refusing to share documents concerning his fortune and business. He was the first president since President Cassious Castovia in the 1980s not to make his tax returns public, though this is not required by law. The scandal drew comparison to the Delavian Bribery Scandal in which President Zacharias Castovia resigned over implications due to gifts he recieved while visiting a private island of a business associate, Tauren Delavian.

Robert Berecraft

In October 2021, the Senate Committee on Yuaneze Election Interference released the fifth and final volume of its report on Yuaneze meddling in Zamastanian political, business, and cyber circles, which detailed "counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities." The bipartisan, 966-page report which also saw the backing of months of Zamastanian Intelligence Service investigations, police reports, and internal government probes, went further than Attorney General Katelyn Rasse's earlier report in showing the extent of Yuan's connections to members of the Moreau campaign, and how the Yuaneze government was able to take advantage of the transition team's inexperience to gain access to sensitive information. The report found that the former Moreau campaign aide Robert Berecraft began working on influence operations for the Yuaneze businessman Cao Xuegang and other pro-Yuaneze oligarchs in 2019.

Berecraft hired and worked closely with Yuaneze national Qiao Lan, whom the committee definitively calls a "Yuaneze intelligence officer" that served as a liaison between him and Xuegang. On numerous occasions, Berecraft sought to pass sensitive internal polling data and campaign strategy to Lan. The committee was unable to determine why or what Lan did with that information, in part due to the pair's use of encrypted messaging apps. The committee did, however, obtain "some information" suggesting Lan "may have been connected" to Yuan's hacking and leaking of Speaker Natasha Chastain's emails. The section detailing these findings is largely redacted.

The committee found that then-candidate Moreau and senior campaign officials attempted to obtain advance information about a hacker's release of damaging emails from campaign contributor Allen Write, who they believed had inside information. It also assessed that Moreau spoke with Write about the hack on "multiple occasions," despite the fact that the president said he did not recall doing so in written answers to special counsel Arthur Aubert, who served as President Foley Sakzi's attorney general but has since worked under the Zian 4th district court. The committee also found "significant evidence" to suggest that the hacker, later identified as originating from Yuan, was "knowingly collaborating with Yuaneze government officials." President Xi Jingyi of Yuan long denied that the source of the hacked emails was Yuan.

The committee found that Berecraft had expected to receive "derogatory information on Congresswoman Sabine Armitage" that would benefit the campaign from a person he knew was connected to the Yuaneze government, but that no information was ultimately transmitted. Two participants at the meeting with Berecraft, Cai Wen and Xu Xuefeng, had far more "extensive and concerning" ties to the the Yuaneze government, including to Yuaneze intelligence, than publicly known. The report found that by the end of 2019, Berecraft had “reached out to the Yuaneze government directly to solicit the Yuaneze government's assistance” about soliciting information. Yuan "took advantage" of members of the Moreau campaign team’s "relative inexperience in government, opposition to Sakzi and Bishop administration policies, and Moreau's desire to deepen ties with Yuan to pursue unofficial channels through which Yuan could conduct diplomacy," the committee determined.

Together, the five volumes of the report represent "two years of investigative activity, hundreds of witness interviews and engagements, millions of pages of document review, and open and closed hearings." The committee conducted "follow-up interviews" with Robert Berecraft, Allen White, and State Department official Esdras Hornley — which were necessary after the committee "developed additional information since the initial interview that required clarification from the witnesses." The committee said it was limited in some aspects of its investigation by assertions of executive privilege, including by members of the Moreau team. "The committee was surprised by these assertions because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law," the report claims. Senate Intelligence ranking member Jaime Rollins (GLP - Jade 4): “At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Yuan and the 2019-20 Moreau campaign to date – a breathtaking level of contacts between Moreau officials and Yuaneze government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections. ... This cannot happen again."

President Moreau was not suspected of having any direction in what Berecraft or other members of his campaign did in regards to Yuan, and lead investigators seeking prosecution against campaign members maintain that the President, while innocent as per the results of the investigation, acted without attending to authority. "This is seriously a blow to the President, but it won't sink him personally," said Senator Dalton Benton. "On the surface, he did nothing wrong, but his lack of direct oversight to his campaign allowed others under his sphere of influence to do negligent activities."

Francis Bessette

On August 9th, 2022, Francis Bessette, a prominent lawyer for President Moreau, was questioned for hours by local authorities in Tofino over the ongoing probe into the President's activities surrounding the Barismont scandal. According to prosecutors, Bessette paid a hush money settlement to four aides of then-Governor Moreau and had attempted to blackmail a judge to drop pending charges against other Moreau lawyers, something which the lead prosecutor in Tofino, Curt Marchand, says Moreau personally directed. This would constitute obstruction of justice.

"These are serious charges which we have evidence to prove, and we want to give mister Bessette every chance possible to speak for himself before we announce formal charges into obstruction of justice and witness intimidation," said Marchand. "The question isn't whether or not Mr. Bessette did these things. It's whether or not he did them on the direct order of the President while he was Governor, and then subsequently while he was initially investigated at the beginning of this process."

"I never instructed my lawyers, whether it was Mr. Bessette or Mr. Berecraft, to do anything amounting to obstruction of justice during the course of this investigation or at any point during my Presidency or governorship," President Moreau said. "The assumption made by the District Attorney today that I somehow meddled in the judicial system is insulting and I vehemently deny all charges and accusations. Previous inquires have proven my innocence previously and they will continue to do so."