FRANCE: Tears welled up in Roland Dumas's eyes when he heard the verdict in the appeals court yesterday. Some 22 months after he was convicted of knowingly benefiting from the embezzlement of funds from the state-owned oil company Elf, Mr Dumas (80) was acquitted.
For seven years in the 1980s and 1990s, Mr Dumas was Francois Mitterrand's flamboyant foreign minister.
"He's speechless," Mr Dumas's lawyer, Jean-René Farthouat, said. "Justice has triumphed."
Yet many in France will wonder why a man condemned to six months in prison, a two-year suspended sentence and a €150,000 fine was cleared on appeal - and why only he, of five co-defendants, escaped punishment.
Mr Dumas's former mistress, Christine Deviers-Joncour, had her 30-month prison sentence, of which 18 months was suspended, and €152,459 fine upheld.
"This is total ignominy," a lawyer in the courtroom muttered. "They were living together; no one dares touch politicians."
The case raises serious questions about French justice. If Mr Dumas was innocent, the serving President of the Constitutional Council was brought down for no reason. "They made the fourth-ranking person in the State resign," Mr Farthouat said. "They almost imprisoned him. They humiliated him by restricting his travel, imposed a substantial deposit - all that to conclude they had no criminal case against him."
When the trial started two years ago, Mr Dumas was a feisty vieux beau, with an elegant silver mane and Saville Row suits. "When this is over, I'll take care of certain magistrates," he threatened.
But yesterday, Mr Dumas looked faded and diminished. The judge noted his behaviour was "morally blameful" but not "criminally punishable."
The Dumas trial provided France with a glimpse of the former minister's lifestyle. Mr Dumas once had a grand piano delivered to a beach so that Ms Deviers-Joncour could play for him by moonlight. She gave him custom-made Italian shoes costing €2,000, ancient Greek statues and other artworks.
They dined in expensive restaurants and Ms Deviers-Joncour entertained for the then foreign minister in a €2.59 million apartment near the Eiffel Tower, purchased with taxpayers' money.
Ms Deviers-Joncour was the big loser in yesterday's verdict. Between 1989 and 1993, the statuesque divorcée, now 54, received €7,622 per month in bogus "salary" on the pretence she would lobby her lover, Mr Dumas, to approve a €2.44 billion arms sale to Taiwan. She withdrew her accusations last year - the apparent reason for his acquittal.
While two other co-defendants, Loik Le Floch Prigent and Alfred Sirven, ran France's biggest company, some 200 ghost employees received substantial "salaries" from Elf in a vast influence-peddling and corruption scandal. Both risk 10-year prison sentences in a much bigger corruption trial to begin in March.
Mr Le Floch has two years left to serve in the Dumas case, and Mr Sirven has served two years of his three-year sentence.
