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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (384000)	4/2/2003 3:13:53 AM
From: JEB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Elf scam 'paid French political funds' PARIS, March 31 (AFP) - Former top executives of the French oil giant Elf admitted in court Monday that a secret slush-fund at the company was used to finance political parties and candidates for the country's presidency. At the start of week three of a four-month trial, Alfred Sirven - who in the early 1990s was "general affairs manager" at the then state-owned concern - said it was widely known that Elf funds were being syphoned into politics. "It was a secret to no-one that Elf had been used for things like that since forever... I myself took personal charge of things of this nature," he said. But the 76 year-old refused to give the names of beneficiaries of Elf's largesse. "I said that I would give no detail and I would reveal no name... I take responsibility for what I have done, and I will continue to do so - whatever the cost," he said. Sirven is one of the 37 accused in a major corruption trial, which centres on charges that between 1989 and 1993 he and other high-ranking officials embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars from Elf's secret accounts for their personal enrichment. Sirven's former boss Loik le Floch-Prigent, 59, who told the court a week ago that he knew of a "fund... for political purposes," said Monday that among those who drew on the money were "candidates for the presidency of the republic." When he took over as chief executive of Elf in 1989 the money principally benefitted the Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, he said, but the country's Socialist president Francois Mitterrand "asked me to balance things out so that other parties would profit." Le Floch-Prigent said that the fund amounted to about five million dollars per year, but Sirven said: "This seems to me a gross under-estimate." Presidential elections in 1988 led to a run-off between the incumbent Mitterrand and the RPR candidate, France's current President Jacques Chirac, who lost. Sirven and Le Floch-Prigent are both serving prison terms, having been convicted of abuse of corporate funds in the trial of Mitterrand's foreign minister Roland Dumas. Dumas was accused of benefitting from Elf money but acquitted. A third accused, Andre Trallo, 75, who was known as Elf's Mr Africa, said he had been "informed of the existence of means for political financing," but he denied having any relation with them. "I never had the job of financing French politicians," he told the court. The allegations of party-funding form part of the backdrop to the charges but are not in themselves under prosecution at the trial, which focuses purely on the claims of embezzlement. Elf, which was privatised in 1994 and now forms part of TotalFinaElf, is believed to have been used by successive governments to expand French influence in Africa and to have paid out millions of dollars in commissions to various leaders and middlemen. In a recent interview Dumas said that Elf "gradually turned into a cash-cow. Its capital was used to reward African heads of state, but also - one thing leading to another - to bail out certain empty coffers." The others accused in the trial are Elf executives and private intermediaries who are alleged to have arranged pay-offs around the world and helped hide the funds in secret accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg and other tax havens. The trial is due to last till July with a verdict towards the end of the year. expatica.com