Jean Chalopin

Jean Chalopin (born 31 May 1950) is a French bank executive. During the 1980s and early 1990s he was an animation producer and screenwriter, creating a range of successful animated series, first through his production company DIC and then at his newly created company C&D from 1987. He is probably best known as the co-creator of Inspector Gadget, as well as the co-writer and producer of The Mysterious Cities of Gold. He currently heads Bahamas-based Deltec Bank. Career In 1968, Chalopin formed an advertising company named the Office de Gestion et d'Action Publicitaire (OGAP, Office of Management and Advertising Action). In 1971, with the backing of Radio Television Luxembourg, Chalopin renamed the company to Diffusion Information Commercial (DIC, Commercial Information Dissemination) which later evolved into DIC Entertainment. At DIC, he wrote, developed and produced programmes animated by overseas studios. DIC's first major series were the French-Japanese co-productions Ulysses 31 and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, which Chalopin produced and co-wrote. Subsequently, he co-created Inspector Gadget together with Andy Heyward and Bruno Bianchi; its launch in 1983, concurrently with The Littles, marked DIC's foray into the American marketplace. In 1987, Chalopin founded the company Créativité et Développement, aka C&D (eng: Creativity and Development), after selling his shares in DIC, and continued to produce cartoons in the late 1980s and 1990s. C&D had offices in Paris and Tokyo while setting up Jetlag Productions as its American affiliated company. C&D had purchased the DIC library foreign distribution rights from Saban Entertainment soon after Saban had acquired them from DIC in 1987. In 1996, Chalopin sold the C&D library to Fox Kids Worldwide, while the company itself was absorbed into Saban International Paris. After moving to the Bahamas in 1987, Chalopin began investing in Deltec Bank and Trust, eventually becoming its largest shareholder and chairman. According to Chalopin, as chairman he sought out smaller technology-related businesses, including Tether and its controlling company Bitfinex in 2018. At that time, Deltec was the only bank willing to work with the cryptocurrency.