Thirty-seven people, among them several former senior executives in the French oil company Elf, have been ordered to appear in a Paris court in March to answer charges of corporate corruption totalling hundreds of millions of euros (dollars).

The accused include former Elf boss Loik Le Floch-Prigent and his lieutenant, Alfred Sirven, who was arrested in the Philippines last year and who has been in custody in Paris ever since, according to the order signed last Friday by investigating magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke.

They were among 42 individuals singled out in a February report sent to state prosecutors following an eight year criminal investigation launched by two other judges.

Insufficient evidence was found to implicate the four other suspects probed in the case -- including former interior minister Charles Pasqua -- and they were dropped from the arraignment list, a source close to the matter said Monday.

The 37 remaining on it are alleged to have ordered or operated a multi-million-euro slush fund that Elf, once a state-owned company, was said to have used to curry political favour or to bribe its way into contracts around the world.

Two of the affairs to be examined by the court include Elf's purchase of refineries in Leuna, in eastern Germany and in Ertoil, in Spain.

Paris prosecutor Yves Bot submitted a case file on December 13 that accused Le Floch-Prigent and Sirven of making illegal use of a total 351 million euros of Elf funds in the early 1990s, much of it for personal gain.

The allegations all date from before the privatisation of Elf, now known as TotalFinaElf, in 1994, and hark back to an era in which French governments used the company as an arm of foreign policy -- notably in Africa, where many of its most lucrative investments were based.

According to investigators, the company built up a multi-million dollar slush fund which it was able to draw on -- either for its own, the French government's or third parties' accounts -- in order to secure contracts and establish networks of influence.

The trial is scheduled to start March 17 and to finish at the end of June next year.

The French public had a foretaste of the legal drama surrounding Elf last year when a former foreign minister, Roland Dumas, was sentenced to six months for receiving gifts illegally paid for by Elf and delivered via his mistress, Elf employee Christine Deviers-Joncour.

Deviers-Joncour, Le Floch-Prigent, and a businessman, Gilbert Miara, also received jail terms.

Dumas, who was forced to step down as president of France's Constitutional Court, appealed that conviction, which was seen here as an indictment of a widespread network of institutionalized corruption that emerged during the era of former Socialist president Francois Mitterrand.

A verdict in that case is expected January 29.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.