French Guiana - Launched today on the back of a Russian Soyuz rocket the 970kg French spy-in-the-sky is programmed to detect astronomical sums passing through City of London coffers.
It will work in tandem with five other satellites piggybacking on the Russian craft including four French military radar eavesdropping machines designed to block NATO counter-snooping systems.
Another payload satellite, the Chilean military's SSOT, will search for General Pinochet's missing $$$ billions by tracking Hellfire Club get-rich-quick oil and gas scams.
A French Central Bank source said today he's confident the dual state-of-the-art listening systems 'will soon find the cracks in City of London firewalls' designed to keep EU grubby mitts off hard-earned UK taxpayers' dosh.
Space analysts reckon however that the equipment has been developed in conjunction with Russian geeks responsible for myriad space exploration 'triumphs' - including the tragic Phobos-Grunt probe.
Fears that the rogue craft's degenerating orbit 'somewhere inside the Van Allen Belt' may collide with the French Pleiades-1 are of course entirely delusional a NASA source advised today.
"Besides, these cheese-eating French surrender monkeys will never give up their dream to control City of London trillions," the Jet Convulsion Laboratory's emeritus professor of retro-engineering commented this afternoon.
Reports that the Soyuz payload carrier has been cobbled together from recycled World War II submarine wrecks have been dismissed as a bit misleading.
Vladimir Putin is 69.
