Paris - France's biggest fraud trial in recent years opened yesterday with 124 people charged with embezzling 540 million francs (£45 million) from banks and insurance companies in a pyramid scheme.
The accused, most of whom worked in the Sentier commercial district of Paris, are charged with setting up a series of networks aimed at defrauding banks and insurance companies, which raised the alarm in 1997. "This is a scheme as old as the trade business," one investigator said. "It consists of telling a bank that you have signed a contract and obtaining a loan. Then you use the money to reimburse another bank and so on," he said, describing how the pyramid scheme worked. "In the end the banks have given loans that they will never recover."
The trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, is taking place in a Paris courtroom built specially for the occasion to accommodate the defendants, their attorneys and counsel for the 34 plaintiffs.