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Elf trial resumes in France


Roland Dumas, former French foreign minister, is one of those on trial

PARIS, France -- Former oil industry executive Alfred Sirven has asked a court in France to scrap a high-profile corruption case in which he is charged, alongside the former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas.

Sirven -- said to know all the secrets of the Elf scandal -- made his appeal as soon as the trial re-opened on Monday after a month-long adjournment granted to allow him to prepare his defence.

Sirven spent nearly four years on the run until he was extradited from the Philippines last month.

Before his capture, other defendants in the case had all named him as the central figure who could explain why the then state-owned Elf oil company paid 64 million francs ($9 million) to the former mistress of Dumas.

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CNN's Jim Bitterman: Sirven claims to have enough evidence to bring down the French Republic

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Robert Boyce, London school of economics: Everyone is waiting to see who Sirven will point his finger at

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Lawyers for the 74-year-old argued on Monday the trial should start afresh at a later date since Sirven had not been in court to listen to claims made about him.

They also said that some charges against Sirven were not valid and Swiss courts might be more appropriate to rule on the scandal.

The court promptly went into recess to consider the request.

The ex-head of the oil company, Loik Le Floch-Prigent, is also in the dock alongside Sirven, Dumas and his former lover Christine Deviers-Joncour. The trial has gripped the country since it began in January.

"Mr Sirven asks that the whole case be put back to a later date," read the written request submitted to the judge.

"He was not able to listen to the other witnesses," it said. "Other parties might have said things they would not necessarily have said in his presence."

Dumas once told the court: "The central figure in all this affair is Sirven. At the time he knew everyone in Paris."

Sirven was second in command at Elf between 1989 and 1993 and is accused of distributing millions of dollars in illegal slush funds allegedly siphoned from the firm at the time.

In their written request, Sirven's lawyers also said the case might have to be tried in Switzerland, since most payments went through his office there.

Sirven, currently in jail in Paris, has complained that the limited brief of the trial masked "the real nature" of the case, which he said was linked to the controversial 1991 sale of French frigates to Taiwan.

The Elf jigsaw puzzle also has pieces in Germany and Africa.

Deviers-Joncour told the court in January that Sirven hired her to work for Elf in 1989 and paid her 64.5 million francs ($9 million), some of which went to Dumas in the form of expensive gifts, such as a pair of handmade boots.

She said she was paid to lobby Dumas on Elf's behalf, but Le Flock-Prigent ridiculed her assertion and said Sirven had betrayed the company by hiring her.

Deviers-Joncour said that Sirven also told her to lobby Dumas over the sale to Taiwan of six French frigates in a contract worth some 16 billion francs.

The sale eventually went ahead, despite protests from China.

Dumas told the court that the late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand had sanctioned the contract, not him.

Magistrates have studiously avoided mentioning the Taiwanese connection in the current indictments.

Reuters contributed to this report.