Fugitive French Oil Exec Alfred Sirven Arrested

MELISSA EDDY / AP3feb01

New NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) Chief Reynaldo Wycoco, right, puts handcuffs on French fugitive Alfred Sirven, a French oil executive, prior to his immediate deportation back to Paris following his arrest at Tagaytay city, south of Manila, Friday February 2, 2001. Sirven, the former second-in-command of the French oil company Elf, went on trial in absentia in a multi million-dollar kickback case involving a former foreign minister, was on the run for four years until his arrest Friday. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

FRANKFURT, Germany -- An oil executive accused of harboring secrets about a web of corruption involving France's political establishment was arrested Saturday after arriving from the Philippines.

After three years on the run, Alfred Sirven was taken into custody at the Frankfurt airport. He had been nabbed in the Philippines on Friday and put on a flight to Europe, border police spokesman Klaus Ludwig said.

Sirven was ordered held pending a decision on his extradition to France. Judge Eva-Maria Wagner said a decision was expected within the week, and Sirven's German legal counsel said he was ready to return home.

``He agrees with extradition to Paris,'' attorney Susanne Wagner told reporters. ``He wants to go before a French court.''

Sirven, 74, is wanted as part of a trial that started two weeks ago with former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas at its center. Sirven is believed to hold the key to corruption involving the former French state-run oil giant Elf Aquitaine.

Sirven refused to answer questions Saturday about the corruption allegations, Judge Wagner told The Associated Press. She said he would be questioned again before any extradition.

He told a French newspaper in an interview published Saturday that he would not talk.

``I want to protect all those who helped me, I will say nothing,'' Sirven told Le Parisien in an interview conducted before he left the Philippines.

``My work in this company was mixed with politics, and that is never good. I could hand over about a hundred names ... but it doesn't interest me,'' Sirven said. ``If I am forced to speak, it will be at the risk and peril of those who force me.''

``I am a tired man. I have blood pressure problems, I could have a heart attack at any moment -- please do not irritate me,'' he said. ``But I swear on my grandchildren that everything that has been said about me is not true.''

Sirven has been on trial in absentia for the past two weeks, one of seven defendants in a case that also targets Dumas, 78, his ex-mistress and five people who worked for or were linked to Elf.

French judicial authorities claim Sirven played a crucial role in the misappropriation of some $400 million in Elf funds, allegedly for kickbacks, commissions and a slush fund to pay out salaries to phony employees -- including Dumas' former mistress.

The case is the first to come to trial after a lengthy judicial investigation into Elf, which has since been taken over by the Franco-Belgian oil group TotalFina.

Sirven also figures in allegations that former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl accepted bribes for his Christian Democratic party in the sale of the Leuna oil refinery in former communist East Germany to Elf in the 1990s. Kohl called the claims ``slanderous allegations.''

Charged with misuse of public funds, Sirven was the confidant of former Elf President Loik Le Floch-Prigent, who is also on trial. Le Floch-Prigent came to Elf in 1989, hired Sirven and put him in charge of ``general affairs,'' a new post.

At his official retirement in 1991, Sirven was put in charge of an Elf subsidiary in Geneva, Elf Aquitaine International. The newspaper Le Monde reported that he allegedly organized, from Switzerland, fictitious salaries for numerous ``counselors,'' some close to former political personalities.