|
News | Web Resources | Yellow Pages | Free Advertising | Chat
Bangladesh |
Immigration |
E-cards |
Horoscope |
Matrimonial |
|
Change Your Life! |
Germany prepares to extradite key French corruption suspect |
|
News
|
|
|
February 6, 2001
FRANKFURT-- (AP) - Germany plans to extradite former oil industry executive Alfred Sirven, a central figure in a corruption scandal involving French politicians, to France by Tuesday evening, a German prosecutor said. "German prosecutors foresee that Mr. Sirven will be handed over on Tuesday around 1800 (1700 GMT) to French authorities," Hildegard Becker-Toussaint said Monday. Sirven, 74, has been in a German jail since his unexpected arrest at Frankfurt airport Saturday on his arrival from the Philippines, where armed special agents nabbed him after four years on the run and put him on a plane to Europe. "This will happen with the help of German customs authorities at Frankfurt airport." Becker-Toussaint said earlier the charges involved, including alleged breach of trust and corruption, are also punishable in Germany. Although Sirven is not sought here, the prosecutor said the delay in extraditing him would allow German authorities who have an interest in questioning him over separate corruption allegations to do so, if Sirven agrees to talk to them. Sirven's lawyer and the Frankfurt judge who arraigned him said last weekend that he had waived his right to challenge extradition and was ready to face a court in France, where he is charged with misuse of public funds at former French state-run oil giant Elf Aquitaine. Sirven is believed to hold the key to the corruption scandal and is wanted as part of a trial that started two weeks ago with former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas at its center. French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said Saturday he hoped Sirven would return to France soon. He said French authorities had opted to put him on a flight to Germany to get him into "European judicial space" quickly and avoid risking his possible escape in the Philippines. In an interview in France's Le Monde daily, German Interior Minister Otto Schily said Sirven had been arrested in accordance with the European border laws known as the Schengen accords and that Germany had not issued a warrant for his arrest. "We now have the duty to extradite him, and we will respect this duty," Schily was quoted as saying in the newspaper's Tuesday edition. Sirven has been on trial in absentia for the past two weeks, one of seven defendants in a case that also targets Dumas, 78, his ex-mistress and five people who worked for or were linked to Elf. That trial was suspended Monday following Sirven's arrest. It has been suspended until Wednesday, though it could be put off if Sirven remains in Germany. French judicial authorities claim Sirven had a crucial role in the misappropriation of some dlrs 400 million in Elf funds, money allegedly used for kickbacks, commissions and a slush fund to pay out salaries to phony employees - like Dumas' former mistress. The case is the first to come to trial after a lengthy investigation into the affairs of Elf, now part of the Franco-Belgian oil group TotalFina. Sirven also figures in allegations that former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl took bribes for his Christian Democratic party in the sale of the Leuna oil refinery in former communist East Germany to Elf in the 1990s. Kohl has rejected the allegations as "slanderous." Volker Neumann, head of a parliamentary committee investigating the allegations, said Monday that lawmakers want to question Sirven and would try to delay his extradition to France until the end of the week. Becker-Toussaint said that "up to the point of his extradition, the parliamentary investigating committee and possibly interested German criminal investigation authorities have the possibility to question Mr. Sirven in jail." But "whether Mr. Sirven is prepared to say anything can only be decided when the relevant questions have been put to him," she added. |