Dumas guilty in sleaze trial

Dumas says he is a scapegoat in corruption affair

PARIS, France -- A French court has convicted former Foreign Minister Roland Dumas and sentenced him to six months in prison in a corruption trial that has enthralled France.

The 78-year-old former minister was charged with receiving illegal funds from the state-owned Elf Aquitaine oil company between 1989 and 1992 while he was foreign minister. The court also handed Dumas a two-year suspended sentence.

Dumas' former lover, Christine Deviers-Joncour, whom prosecutors say reaped $9 million from Elf for her work as a lobbyist after Dumas allegedly got her a job at the company, was sentenced to three years in prison, half of which was suspended.

Dumas was also ordered to pay a fine of $854,000 while Deviers-Joncour, 53, was fined $1.3 million by the court.

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There was no immediate word of whether Dumas and Deviers-Joncour would appeal the court's decision.

The verdict for Dumas -- a French Resistance fighter during World War II who later rose through political ranks to become a leading Socialist -- completes the politician's fall from grace.

After the Elf scandal broke, Dumas was forced to resign as head of the French Constitutional Council -- France's highest judicial authority.