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Letter claims Bordeaux crash not an accident
A menacing letter claiming that the recent helicopter crash in Bordeaux was not an accident has been sent to a local newspaper as well as estate agents in the area.
Lam Kok (second right) and James Gregoire pose outside Château de la Riviere in Fronsac following its sale for a reported €30m to Kok on 19 December. A day later, both were killed in a helicopter crash. Credit: Getty Images/AFP
Midi-Libre recently reported that it had received a letter which stated: “James Grégoire has paid with his life for selling his estate, Château de la Rivière, to a foreigner exactly 10 days after our warning.
“The Chinese buyer, Lam Kok, has also paid with his life.”
Grégoire, Kok, Kok’s son and an interpreter were all killed in a helicopter crash last December soon after the Chinese tea billionaire had purchased the property.
The letter, which the newspaper described as “despicable”, did not however claim direct responsibility for the tragedy.
It went on with mounting violence to denounce “financial speculation” and even agricultural development and ended with a warning.
“Those that sell to foreigners, their intermediaries and the foreigners will finish up at the bottom of a river or six feet under!”
The newspaper reported today (10 January) that several estate agents in the area had received similar letters.
It is thought the mysterious letters may be the work of CAV (Comité d’action viticole), a group of quasi-terrorist winemakers from the Languedoc who reached their heyday in the 1970s but allegedly blew up the party headquarters of the Socialist Party in Carcassonne last July.
The letter was signed Comité d’action agricoles along with a phrase in Occitan, “Volem viure al pais,” a common slogan in Occitan separatist circles meaning, “we want to live in our own country”.
Police investigating the crash are doubtful of the letter’s veiled claims and are still pursuing their inquiries along the lines that the incident was a tragic accident.
The bodies of Grégoire, Kok and the interpreter are yet to be recovered.