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Article

24 Sep 2012

Author:
Jean Décotte, Reuters

French court fines Total unit for 2001 blast [France]

Eleven years after one of France's worst industrial accidents, a court fined a subsidiary of oil giant Total...over a chemicals plant explosion that killed 31 people and injured 2,500. The appeals court...found the Total subsidiary, owner of the AZF factory, guilty of manslaughter, and jailed the plant's former manager for one year. Judge Bernard Brunet fined Grande Paroisse, the Total subsidiary that owned AZF, 225,000 euros ($292,300) but dismissed calls to rule against Total itself...Judge Brunet said the manager in charge of AZF at the time, Serge Biechlin, was aware of the dangers of the products handled at the plant and did not take sufficient precautionary measures...A defence lawyer working for both Biechlin and Grande Paroisse said he would contest the ruling in the Cour de Cassation...