French Polynesia's Flosse sentenced in espionage case

Transcript

French Polynesia's former president Gaston Flosse has been found guilty of abusing public funds but acquitted of violating privacy in a long-running espionage case against him.

The criminal court in Papeete rejected that his intelligence service, which ran between 1997 and 2004, invaded the privacy of rival politicians, journalists and others.

But Flosse was found guilty of abusing 10 million US dollars of public funds by running a spy agency out the presidency office.

He has been sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail term, to pay 19,000 US dollars and is ineligible to hold public office for two years.

A former journalist and politician Sabrina Birk, who says she was spied on, says she's not satisfied with the outcome of the case.

SABRINA BIRK: We were all the time under fear because these were big people, dangerous people, that would come to your place, harass you, you could be intimated, your car could be trafficked so that you would have an accident. The thing is, he was using public funds to do this. But during this period, one must not forget he was the friend of the French president Jacques Chirac. And so whenever we would at the time deposit a file in front of the police station it would never be held. So at the time we couldn't do anything against these actions. Gaston Flosse had all the documents destroyed and these people who were doing this, these spies, had everything destroyed. So there was barely anything to as proof left to go in front of these judges. About the violating of privacy, is the fact he is not found guilty because they do not have proof. We were lots of people who Gaston Flosse used intimidation and used these people against us to follow us, to listen to us, everything we did, to come into our houses, to steal our computers. We lived under a dictatorship at this time.

MARY BAINES: So once again Flosse has avoided a jail term, and it appears he probably will appeal and so the appeal process goes on. What do you make of that?

SB: Right now I find it is more politics. It is like finally we have judges that want to look for justice. Can we say do they really want justice, or is it because it's the socialists fighting the right wing was Jacques Chirac. We saw that the French government, that justice let pass so many things in the past that we never had justice. And today justice is slipping away from us. I do think that if Flosse appeals he probably will come out with nothing and not be condemned because it is true, the years have passed, and the prescription is over, and he has a very good lawyer that knows how to use French laws in order to avoid that his client is condemned. But it doesn't mean he's not guilty. Gaston Flosse is guilty.