Former fugitive French businessmen Alfred Sirven, who arrived at Frankfurt airport early today after being deported from the Philippines, was detained when he got off the plane, a German border police spokesman said.
"Alfred Sirven is provisionally being held in the border police offices at the airport pending his being taken before a magistrate" in Frankfurt, spokesman Klaus Ludwig said.
A decision on whether to transfer him to France or to keep him in Germany for the time being was up to the Frankfurt court, Ludwig told reporters earlier.
The former number two of Elf oil was deported from the Philippines for allegedly running a massive slush-fund for the French company.
The detention of Mr Sirven, 74, by the German police comes as an unexpected glitch in the return to France by the key man in the Elf scandal. It had been expected that he would be put on board a French government plane and taken immediately to Paris.
He is the alleged pay-master of a multi-million-dollar slush fund at the then state-owned Elf and is widely considered the missing link in the corruption trial of former French foreign minister Roland Dumas.
The corruption trial is currently being held in Paris but has been put on hold pending Mr Sirven's arrival.
Mr Sirven was arrested in the Philippines yesterday after more than three years on the run from French authorities.
German prosecutors are interested in hearing Mr Sirven testify on alleged kickbacks paid when the east German company Leuna was sold to Elf in 1992.
Magistrates suspect that the funds were partially used to finance the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) when it was run by former chancellor Helmut Kohl.
AFP