French investigators are examining claims that the money was channelled from Elf Aquitaine to help Thomson-CSF, another French firm, win a contract to supply Taiwan with six warships in 1991. The former mistress of the then foreign minister, Roland Dumas, has claimed that Alfred Sirven, the second in command at Elf, gave her money to persuade M. Dumas to drop his opposition to the sale. However, M. Dumas, who was jailed earlier this year for accepting illegal gifts from the company, has always denied this, saying that the frigates decision was made by the president at the time, Francois Mitterrand.

Be that as it may, the accounts have been frozen, along with a smaller number of accounts in Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, thought to total around SFr120 million. Although Geneva's chief prosecutor, Bernard Bertossa hes refused to name the account holders and banks involved, Credit Suisse First Boston and its private banking subsidiary, Bank Leu revealed recently that they held frozen accounts containing more than SFr250 million. Last week, Zurich based private bank Julius Baer announced that it too had notified suspect accounts.

Although initially a French investigation, the bulk of the judicial action is taking place in Geneva because Elf International, a subsidiary run by Alfred Sirvan which appears to have been the main conduit for corrupt payments during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was based there.