Three former French government ministers were given jail terms and fines here Wednesday for their involvement in the biggest illegal funding scandal by political parties in the country.

The final sentencing put an end to a seven-year investigation and four-month judicial proceedings.

Forty-three defendants, including politicians, party officials and representatives of some of France's biggest construction companies, were involved in the scandal.

Michel Roussin, 66, former cabinet director at Paris city hall when Chirac was mayor, and cooperation minister from 1993 to 1995, was given a four-year suspended sentence and a fine of 50,000 euros.

A former president of the Ile-de-France regional council and former labor minister, Michel Giraud, 76, was also given a four- year suspended sentence and a 80,000-euro fine.

Former sports minister Guy Drut, 54, now a member of the International Olympic Committee, was handed a 15-month suspended sentence and fined 50,000 euros for creating a bogus job as part of the scheme.

Louise-Yvonne Casetta, 62, a former RPR party treasurer, was given a 20-month suspended sentence and fined 10,000 euros and former Socialist Party (PS) treasurer Gerard Peybernes was handed a 15-month suspended sentence and fined 8,000 euros.

According to the prosecution, the trial concerned kickbacks worth more than 70 million euros allegedly paid by construction firms in order to win bids to renovate secondary schools around the capital.

The investigation once came down to President Chirac himself when magistrates began looking into large sums paid for his personal travel expenses while he was mayor of Paris.

But his office said the money, equivalent to some 300,000 euros, came from bonus he earned as prime minister in the 1980s.

Source: Xinhua