Great Oil Sniffer Hoax

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

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 proved not to work as expected, the team started work on 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 they 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 pro-Europe 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 attempt to arrange development funding. An attempt to interest Crosby Kelly in New York failed when Kelly stated he would only put up money if the device first proved itself able to work. A friend of Violet's, Italian industrialist Carlo Pesenti, proved more interested and agreed to start funding early development. A new company formed in Switzerland: Fisalma, Inc. (registered in Panama), under the direction of Philippe de Weck, president of Union des Banques Suisses (later part of UBS AG from the 1990s). Through contacts in Opus Dei, Violet arranged for Spain's tourism minister, Alfredo Sánchez Bella, to put several test sites in Spain at the team's disposal.

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