/ 30 March 1999

ELF INVESTIGATORS LEAVE

FRENCH judges who visited South Africa probing a scandal that touches on former foreign minister Roland Dumas and his mistress Christine Deviers-Joncours, left Johannesburg on Sunday, judicial sources said on Monday. Examining Magistrates Eva Joly and Laurence Vichnievsky left for Paris after talking to South African police as part of an investigation into Alfred Sirven, an Elf executive who has been on the run since 1997. There is an international arrest warrant for Sirven, who was the right-hand man to Elf’s former managing director Loik Le Floch-Prigent between 1989 and 1993. The South African leg of the investigation was shrouded in secrecy and there was no information given out about their activities in the country.