Former French minister jailed on corruption charges

30 May 2001

A Paris court on Wednesday found Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister, guilty of receiving illegal payments from oil company Elf Aquitaine, sentencing him to six months in prison with an additional two-year suspended sentence and ordering him to pay a fine of FFr1m ($130,000).

Mr Dumas, a close friend of the late Socialist French president Francois Mitterand in whose government he served from 1989 to 1992, had denied charges that he placed his mistress in a job at Elf and that she showered him with luxury gifts courtesy of Elf in return for his influence in government.

Christine Deviers-Joncour, Mr Dumas' former lover, testified that she received FFr64.5m from a fund at Elf in return for lobbying him over a deal to sell six French warships to Taiwan in which Elf was involved.

Mr Dumas, was forced to resign as head of the Constitutional Court, France's fifth highest position, because of the Elf scandal despite repeated claims that he did not know Ms Deviers-Joncour worked for the company.

A panel of three judges also convicted four of Mr Dumas' six co-defendants on charges ranging from embezzlement to receiving illegal funds. Ms Deviers-Joncour, Loik Le Floch-Prigent, former Elf chairman, fellow Elf executive Alfred Sirven and a business middleman all received custodial sentences and large fines.

Mr Le Floch-Prigent, seen as the man at the centre of the scandal, controlled Elf's slush funds and boasted that he knew enough dirt to bring down the French Republic "20 times over."

Two former executives of Elf Aquitaine, now part of TotalFinaElf, were aquitted.

The verdict was a gripping finale to a trial which has grabbed the French public imagination since January, and is seen as a watershed in French politics since it is the first time such a senior politician has been tried for corruption.

Mr Dumas' lawyer said he would appeal the decision.