Court overturns Dumas conviction for corruption

The most complex, and the most colourful, corruption saga in recent French ended yesterday with the acquittal of the star defendant, the former foreign minister Roland Dumas.

The Paris Appeal Court quashed the conviction and six-month jail sentence imposed on M. Dumas, 80, for accepting illegal benefits – including a pair of shoes worth £1,100 and the use of an apartment in Paris – from the Elf oil company when he was Foreign Minister in a Socialist-led government in the late 1980s. The convictions and sentences imposed at the trial in 2001 on other defendants – including Christine Deviers-Joncour, 55, former mistress of M. Dumas and self-styled "Whore of the Republic" – were upheld.

The rulings bring to an end, albeit with something of a whimper, five years of investigations and legal wrangling over the activities of the Elf-Aquitaine oil company in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was state-owned. Judgments in another trial involving former Elf executives are still awaited.

M. Dumas, the most senior French politician to be tried for corruption for many years, said he was "happy that justice has been done". He refused to make any further comment.

Both trials were held against a background of allegations that Elf acted as a front for the shady dealings of successive French governments in selling arms and negotiating oil rights in Asia, Africa and eastern Europe.

Much of the possible evidence and lines of investigation were declared "defence secrets" by the French state.

M. Dumas – who was forced to step down as president of France's Constitutional Court because of the corruption charges – has always insisted that he had done nothing wrong and that his links with Elf could not be understood unless the wider picture was taken into account. The appeal court decided that there was no proof that he knowingly took illegal payments or tried to influence events.

The court rejected the appeal by Deviers-Joncour, who had been found guilty of accepting payments to try to influence him. Her 30-month jail sentence – 12 months of which are suspended, and six months of which she has already served under questioning – was upheld.

The court also upheld a 30-month sentence for Loik Le Floch-Prigent, 59, former president of Elf, for misuse of company funds. He failed to turn up for the hearing and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Alfred Sirven, 75, a former senior executive at Elf who was arrested in hiding in the Philippines during the original trial, was given a slightly reduced sentence of three years, of which he has already served two.

Before leaving court, Sirven, who had once boasted that he knew enough to destroy several French governments, said he was "very happy" for Mr Dumas. He added, perhaps ironically: "Sportif!" which means, roughly speaking, "Fair play to him".