The prosecution in French Polynesia has decided against taking the OPT corruption case to France's highest court after the matter was thrown out over procedural errors last week.
The appeal court in Tahiti had upheld the position of the defence that case was flawed, quashing the five-year jail sentences given in 2013 to a former former president, Gaston Flosse, and a French advertising executive, Hubert Haddad.
Flosse was accused of getting more than two million US dollars in kickbacks for granting public sector contracts to Mr Haddad over a 12-year period until the middle of the last decade.
Flosse had admitted disbursing the money for private expenses but the appeal court refused to judge the case because of procedural flaws cited by the defence.
Gaston Flosse makes phone call during 2014 OPT appeal court trial in Tahiti Photo: AFP
This means that the case will have to go back to the investigative judge for the criminal court to deal with it.
The OPT affair had gone to court in 2013 after years of investigation during which Flosse lost his immunity as French Senator and spent several weeks in a Tahiti prison.
Flosse, who lost office last year after being convicted of corruption, is banned from holding public office for three years.
If he had lost the OPT case, the ineligibility would have been for five years.