France's folly

摘要

The Executive Life scandal continues to take bizarre turns. First, the French government rejected an offer by American prosecutors to settle criminal charges against Credit Lyonnais, a big bank that was owned by the state when it illegally bought Executive Life, an ailing Califor-nian insurance company, in 1991. Under a deal announced last month, France had said it would pay $585m to settle the charges. It seemed that only a few technicalities needed sorting out.