africa: French trial lifts lid on oil corruption in Africa

A month into one of France's biggest ever corruption trials, an avid public has gorged on a rich diet of African bribes, political skullduggery and sensational divorce -- all paid for from the illicit millions of the formerly state-owned oil company Elf. Days of cross-questioning of defendants and witnesses at the criminal court in Paris have provided a feast of insights into the extraordinary profligacy practiced in the early 1990s at the top of one of the country's biggest enterprises -- with the knowledge and collusion of the political elite.