Paris court convicts Scientology of fraud

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By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARIS | A Paris court convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it more than $900,000 on Tuesday, but stopped short of banning the group's activities.

The group's French branch said it would appeal the verdict.

The court convicted the Church of Scientology's French office, its library and six of its leaders of organized fraud. Investigators said the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used "commercial harassment" against recruits.

The group was fined $600,000 and the library $300,000. Four of the leaders were given suspended sentences of between 10 months and two years. The other two were given fines of $1,480 and $2,960.

Prosecutors had urged that the group be disbanded in France and fined $3 million. A law that was briefly on the books this year prevented the court from going so far as to disband the French branch of Scientology in Tuesday's verdict - though it could have taken the lesser step of shutting down its operations.

However, the court did not do so, ruling that French Scientologists would have continued their activities anyway "outside any legal framework."

Agnes Bron, a spokeswoman for the French branch of Scientology, said the verdict was "an Inquisition of modern times," a reference to efforts to rout out heretics of the Roman Catholic Church in centuries past.

"It's really all bark and no bite," said Tommy Davis, a spokesman for the Church of Scientology International. "The church will emerge victorious on appeal."

Speaking by telephone from New York, Mr. Davis said the Church of Scientology was prepared to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by the late science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has been active for decades in Europe, but has struggled to gain status as a religion. It is considered a sect in France and has faced prosecution and difficulties in registering its activities in many countries.

It claims 10 million members around the world, including celebrity devotees Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Defense attorney Patrick Maisonneuve said during the trial that neither the Church of Scientology nor the six leaders on trial had gained financially from the group's practices.

The original complaint in the case dates back more than a decade, when a young woman said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of $31,000 on books, courses and "purification packages" after being recruited in 1998. When she sought reimbursement and to leave the group, its leadership refused. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.