French oil chief admits payments

A former chief of the French oil giant at the centre of a money scandal acknowledged in court yesterday that commissions on oil deals were paid to African leaders.

The money was funnelled through intermediaries to the leaders of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo and Angola, testified Loik Le Floch-Prigent, the one-time president of the former state-run oil company Elf Aquitaine.

"We know that there were people between us and the leaders of these countries," Le Floch-Prigent said, adding that Elf had nothing to do with how the money was divided among them. "The system had to be opaque."

Le Floch-Prigent is one of 37 former top officials on trial on allegations that Elf paid and received enormous commissions and used inflated bills and other devices to enrich a chosen few. The trial, expected to last four months, opened less than two months after an earlier Elf trial finally closed with an appeal court decision overturning a conviction for the former foreign minister Roland Dumas.

The indictment for this trial counts well over 1bn francs of misused public funds under the presidency of Le Floch-Prigent, from 1989 to 1993.

He is serving a 30-month term from the earlier case and faces a five-year sentence if found guilty again.
AP, Paris