PARIS: Prosecutors in the Airbus insider trading case suffered another setback yesterday when a Paris court refused to accept the prosecution dossier, a move which could further delay one of France’s most keenly awaited corporate trials.
In a rare decision, judges at the Paris criminal court ordered that the lengthy legal file giving the reasons for the charges should be sent back to an investigating magistrate for revisions after defence lawyers argued that it was flawed. The trial, involving allegations of insider trading in the shares of Airbus Group, formerly known as EADS, had already been effectively frozen for up to six months after judges on Friday sought a constitutional ruling on whether it should go ahead.
Lawyers involved in the case said the latest decision could delay the trial by between several months and two years, but most predicted the stage of giving evidence in court would begin in about a year if the higher courts allow it to proceed.
Seven current and former executives of Airbus and two former shareholders, Lagardere and Daimler, are accused of seeking to profit from share sales in 2006 while knowing of problems that later damaged the EADS share price. All deny the charges, and their lawyers have challenged the legality of the trial on the grounds that they had already been cleared by the stock market regulator, citing the right not to be pursued twice under the European Convention on Human Rights.
As a secondary line of defence, the lawyers also argued that the prosecution case was badly formulated, a question on which the panel of three judges gave its ruling yesterday. Reuters
