France's Elf scandal rumbles on

Dumas is appealing against his conviction

PARIS, France -- Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas has said his conviction is the tip of the iceberg in a wide-ranging corruption scandal.

Dumas, 78, was jailed for six months in May after being found guilty of receiving illegal funds from the state-owned Elf Aquitaine oil company between 1989 and 1992 while he was foreign minister.

Throughout a multi-million dollar corruption trial that enthralled the country, Dumas maintained he was being made a scapegoat. He reiterated that sentiment on Monday saying the justice system "went after two or three sacrificial lambs and then drew the curtains."

He is appealing his conviction.

PROFILES   •  Roland Dumas   •  Christine Deviers-Joncour   •  Calfred Sirven   •  Other scandals

Dumas told the daily Le Figaro newspaper: "I am convinced the justice system does not want to pursue this all the way through and unearth the truth.

"Perhaps there's a desire to protect the overriding interests of the country, or perhaps to protect people who are still in power."

The high-profile trial -- sparked by a tell-all book by his former lover Christine Deviers-Joncour entitled Whore of the Republic -- exposed a web of corruption at Elf Aquitaine, which prosecutors say was used to channel money in numerous kickback schemes.

After the Elf scandal broke, Dumas -- a French Resistance fighter during World War II who later rose through political ranks to become a leading Socialist -- was forced to resign as head of the French Constitutional Council -- France's highest judicial authority.

"Elf was the milking cow of the Republic ... That was common knowledge," Dumas said.

Loik Le Floch-Prigent, a former Elf chairman convicted along with Dumas in May, told French radio over the weekend: "You cannot keep denying that Elf amounted to a system that was part of the state, an instrument of the state, even an extension of the state."

Dumas said he could not believe that people who were still in power in France had not been aware at the time of the terms and commissions involved in Elf's Leuna -- east German oil refinery -- purchase.

He said Le Floch-Prigent was right when he said many politicians had been aware of what was going on. He mentioned Labour Minister Elisabeth Guigou and Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, but he made no specific accusation against either.

Guigou issued a statement dismissing any allegations that she was aware of such transactions during her time as a junior minister for European affairs under Dumas and Mitterrand.

"The minister was not involved, either closely or loosely, with the Leuna project," her ministry said in a statement.

Vedrine, who was a senior aide to Mitterrand in the early 1990s, told French radio: "I am very surprised by what he (Dumas) said. I never heard about those funds until much later."

Magistrates are still investigating charges that Elf made under-the-table payments to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's CDU party when it bought Leuna, Reuters reported.