Ex-NATO Chief Guilty Over Bribes BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Former NATO chief Willy Claes received a three-year suspended jail sentence Wednesday for corruption involving two defense contracts he awarded as Belgium's economics minister in the late 1980s. The trial, which involved other prominent Belgian leaders, was considered the final curtain for a generation of politicians who, until the 1990s, ruled unhindered by any law banning corporate political donations. Claes, who became NATO secretary-general in September 1994, quit the post after 13 months when the investigation into his role in the corruption case heated up. He was long a powerbroker in the Dutch-speaking Socialist Party. The 3 1/2-month trial's origin lies in the still unresolved death of Andre Cools, a onetime Socialist minister killed in 1991, presumably because he knew of financial wrongdoing in the party. The court said Claes had to have known Italy's Agusta SpA paid $1.37 million to his party to pave the way toward the awarding of a 1988 contract for 46 army helicopters. The 15-judge court gave Claes, 60, the maximum penalty: a three-year suspended jail term and the loss of his civic rights, which means he is barred from voting or being voted into office for five years. Claes issued a brief statement calling the case politically motivated and saying he would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France -- action that will take years and will not suspend implementation of Claes' conviction and sentence in Belgium. The high court ruling cannot be appealed in Belgium. ``This is totally unjust. I don't accept it,'' Claes said in a statement about the ruling. The court also gave former Defense Minister Guy Coeme a two-year suspended sentence for corruption involving Agusta and France's Dassault Aviation SA and similarly convicted former Vice Premier Guy Spitaels and Serge Dassault, the head of Dassault. Eight former aides and associates also were convicted and received suspended sentences of up to two years. The court said Dassault's gift of $1.62 million was a bribe to win a June 1989 contract to equip Belgian F-16 jets with new electronics. The company was competing for the deal with the U.S. firm Litton Industries Inc. The Agusta and Dassault bribes were paid to Belgium's Dutch and French- speaking Socialist parties through secret Swiss and Luxembourg bank accounts. The defense contracts were worth hundreds of millions of dollars each. Belgium didn't outlaw such corporate donations until 1989. To prove corruption, prosecutors were required to show that ``gifts'' from Agusta and Dassault were timed so closely to the awarding of contracts that Claes and the others must have known they were bribes. Other defendants were bitter about Wednesday's ruling. ``In the 11 years as president of the (French-speaking) Socialist Party, the Socialist Party never committed an act of corruption,'' Spitaels said. ``I will defend that on my children's honor until my last breath.'' Coeme, the former defense minister, said he was innocent and a victim of ``an enormous judicial error.''
