On the first day of my new job as a hotel waitress — before I have a chance to polish a glass or proffer a canapé — I’m primed in detail about how to enter the building. Not via the front foyer, but circuitously through a ‘secret staff entrance’.
It is imperative I memorise the route, I’m told by the briskly efficient restaurant manager, who steers me through it, via an obscure door by a KFC outlet in a low-rent shopping mall.
We then travel up two floors in a shabby service lift, past a phalanx of security men, through an underground delivery area, past bins, a staff canteen and along a harshly lit subterranean corridor that smells of urine.
Another staff lift disgorges us into the hotel kitchen, through two swing doors and finally into the light and bustle of its restaurant and gleaming lobby.
It is vital that I take this labyrinthine route in and out of the hotel for the next five days, I’m told, as there is a ‘top secret event’ taking place. ‘The whole hotel is closed to the public,’ says my boss. ‘It’s very important you remember you cannot go in and out of the main entrance. You must use the secret one.’
Although I feign meek subservience, I know very well why levels of security have been ramped up to such histrionic levels at this unassuming four-star hotel in northern Italy, because I am here undercover. My mission is to covertly observe the most secretive gathering of the influential and powerful in the world, known as the Bilderberg Group.
This cabal of the global, largely liberal, elite — with strong ties to the EU — meets every year amid a cloak of secrecy.
At this year’s gathering? With so-called ‘populism’ high on its agenda, passionate Remainers, including former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and former Chancellor George Osborne, all took time out of their busy schedules to attend.
Over drinks receptions and lavish meals, they rubbed shoulders with former president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, three serving EU prime ministers and a current European Commissioner in charge of the bloc’s budget.
Last weekend, the Mail became the first newspaper in the 64-year history of Bilderberg to penetrate its formidable security, gaining insight into the extreme paranoia of this most elusive of clubs.
I watched as military police guarded the hotel perimeter and sniffer dogs checked for bombs outside. Last week, one freelance journalist, who posted footage online of the empty garden marquee where the Bilderberg banquet was due to be held, reported that Italian police stormed his hotel room at 4.30am breaking down his door and ‘pointing a gun’ at him.
So clandestine are the Bilderberg gatherings that no minutes are taken, no press conferences given and no reports published.
The conference operates under ‘Chatham House Rules’, which means participants can use and report information exchanged there, but not disclose the source. But with no record of what goes on — Bilderberg was held on exactly the same weekends as G7 and NATO defence meetings, allowing opportunities for conference calls — critics have said it should be much more transparent. Many argue that the event exists solely to serve as a networking and lobbying opportunity for its attendees.
The Bilderberg Group — so called because it first met in 1954 at the Hotel Bilderberg in the Netherlands — is made up of at least 120 self-proclaimed ‘leading citizens’ of Europe and the U.S., who meet annually to discuss ‘issues of common interest’.
The roll-call of attendees is invariably auspicious. Prime ministers, royalty — Prince Charles and Prince Philip have both attended — army generals, corporate CEOs and bank governors all make time in their busy schedules to be there.
Sitting cheek-by-jowl with the traditional establishment is the new power elite: the technology titans. The 2018 cohort include the co-founder of LinkedIn and the CEO of Vodafone. Google is well-represented: present this year are its director of engineering, the founder of its sister company Jigsaw and the CEO of DeepMind, a British artificial intelligence company.
I’m told by a manager on my first day: ‘It is a top event. It is like the G7 — people from all over the world. The Fiat boss. You can’t tell anyone what goes on here, all the staff are completely sworn to secrecy.’
I’m told not to engage in conversation with these special guests and instead to ‘look down’.
Last week’s meeting in Turin was hosted by Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles, owned by the wealthy Agnelli family dynasty, which housed delegates in a hotel converted from its former Fiat car factory.
On my first day, I’m given a staff master-key with access to all 240 guest rooms.
As I work methodically through each, supplying it with mineral water and a fruit bowl ready for the arrival of its VIP inhabitant, I wonder — could I be preparing this for Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands? Or perhaps Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary? Or even for American statesman Henry Kissinger? On Thursday afternoon at the hotel, minutes before the first delegates arrive, the tension in the foyer is palpable.
Outside, I survey the dozens of suited security and hotel staff, many with ear pieces, some virtually bouncing on the soles of their shoes. No one speaks. They all just wait in position.
Many of the VIPs arrive in private jets at Turin private airport, from where they are driven with police escorts — blue lights flashing, but no sirens — to the hotel.
A flurry of hotel staff greet the disembarking VIPs, while more staff with hotel-branded umbrellas shield them from the lashing rain.
The Bilderberg Association says its purpose is ‘the education’ of ‘mankind, the public’. But because no public reports are published into what actually happens at the conference, there is no way of proving this charitable public purpose.
The Commission said it was opening a case into the Bilderberg Association ‘to ensure its activities are in line with its charitable objects and its legal duty’ and remind it of ‘the importance of transparency’.
A spokesman said it was a criminal offence to knowingly or recklessly provide false or misleading information to the Commission.
Lord Kerr said he was ‘not a trustee’ and directed queries to the address where the charity is registered, Simon Robertson Associates, a financial advisory group run by the former director of Goldman Sachs. Sir Simon Robertson is also on the board of the Economist.
The Bilderberg Association declined to comment, while Ms Minton Beddoes referred us to Bilderberg Meetings, the global company.
For three days I’ve stood on the periphery watching, listening. But ultimately the world’s most secretive meeting remains elusive; a distant babble of voices a few metres away from me along a corridor in a closed room. Near, but infuriatingly just too far away to discern.
So for another year Bilderberg has retained its mystique; its impenetrable secrecy; its elitism. And we mere mortals, unseen and unremarked, are none the wiser.
No comments:
Post a Comment