Scientology Charged with Fraud in France (TV NEWS: 11/09/08)

Australia's Yahoo7 News Programme reports on Scientology being Charged with Fraud in France.
On September 08, 2008, a French judge has ordered two departments and seven prominent members of the Church of Scientology in France to stand trial on charges of organized fraud.
Included in those charged is Alain Rosenberg, the manager of the ASES-Celebrity Centre, and all seven defendants’ face a maximum seven year jail term if convicted.
The case is the latest in a series of legal battles that have pitted the French judicial system against the Scientologists.
If Scientology is found guilty, the church could be forced to cease all of their activities in France - and this would result in closing down of all of their Orgs and Offices throughout the entire country.
The latest suit centres on a complaint made in 1998 by a woman who said she was enrolled into the Church of Scientology by a group of people she met outside a metro station.
In the following months, she said she paid 140,000 francs (21,340 Euros) for "purification packs" and for books and course which she said were a fraud and which had bankrupted her. Other complaints then surfaced, prolonging the investigation. These include illegally practicing medicine and forcing her to purchase an expensive electrometer.
Judge Jean-Christophe Hullin ruled that the Scientologists' Celebrity Cenrer, bookstore and seven Church leaders should be tried for fraud and "illegally practicing as pharmacists".
The Church of Scientology is registered as a religion in the United States but has struggled to be accepted in Europe, with French authorities seeing it as a sect masquerading as a church to make money.
The Church of Scientology denounced Monday's ruling, saying it was being "stigmatized" by the courts.
The trial is expected to start in about six months.
The Church of Scientology has faced numerous setbacks in France, with members convicted of fraud in Lyon in 1997 and Marseille in 1999. In 2002, a court fined it for violating privacy laws and said it could be dissolved if involved in similar cases.