A Paris court on Wednesday handed a past director of the former state-owned French oil giant Elf Aquitaine * and his right-hand man five-year prison sentences for corruption in an affair that involved politicians in several countries.

Former Elf head Loik le Floch-Prigent, 60, was also fined 375 000 euros (430 000 dollars) for his part in the misappropriation of some 1,24 billion French francs (183 million euros) in public funds between 1989 and 1993.

Le Floch-Prigent and 36 other defendants were charged with using public money for bribes and self-enrichment in shadowy deals with politicians and political parties in Germany, Spain and several African countries.

Le Floch-Prigent's former assistant, Alfred Sirven, 76, was also fined 1 million euros. In May 2001, the two men were convicted of graft and given prison sentences in another affair involving Elf.

Eight of the accused were acquitted of the charges. The 29 people convicted by the court were fined a total of 150 million euros. These included Le Floch-Prigent's ex-wife, Fatima Belaid, who was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of one million euros.

The investigation into the various charges involved three French magistrates and lasted over eight years. The three-month trial ended in July.

So powerful was Elf at the time le Floch-Prigent became head in 1989 that the company's African specialist, Andre Tarallo, had more influence on government decisions than many ministers.

Tarallo, nicknamed Elf's "Mister Africa", was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 2 million euros.

The most spectacular of the many affairs on trial involved Elf's purchase of the East German oil refinery Leuna in 1992, for which the French allegedly paid bribes of some 39 million euros to individuals close to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The investigation led all the way to Kohl's junior defence minister, Ludwig Holger Pfahls, who allegedly accepted "commissions" totalling 7.6 million euros for his role in the Leuna purchase.

Pfahls remains on the run because of corruption charges in another affair.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.

* The Reality

Elf-Aquitaine and Thomson-CSF (Thales International) are "Peas in a Pod"

France has jailed Christine Devier-Joncour, to whom $10m was paid through a bank account in Switzerland after the deal for the Taiwanese warships went through. Devier-Joncour is a close friend of former French foreign minister Roland Dumas.

Prosecutors said Devier-Joncour received the money as a lobbying fee from Elf-Aquitaine, the French oil giant that was pushing the ships' sale on behalf of Thomson-CSF.