A fresh bid will be made in French Polynesia today to try a former president and a French executive over a long-running major corruption case involving the OPT telecommunications company.
Gaston Flosse Photo: AFP
The case against a total of eight people was dismissed by the court of appeal last year, quashing the five-year prison sentence given to each Gaston Flosse and Hubert Haddad.
Walter Zweifel reports
"The prosecution wants to challenge the formality that was used to throw out the case and then have the court examine the substance.
When the eight had been convicted in 2013, Haddad was found guilty of paying about two million US dollars in kickbacks over 12 years to Flosse and his political party to get public sector contracts.
A lawyer, who had acted on behalf of the OPT to recover the money, had secured a court order for the OPT to be reimbursed 5.6 million US dollars.
But when Flosse was elected president in 2013, the lawyer was taken off the case of the publicly owned company.
At the time Mr Lau expressed regret that those convicted have taken over key aspects of the case before they were tried in the appeal court."