A French court convicted the Church of Scientology and one of its leaders of defrauding vulnerable members on Tuesday, but stopped short of banning the group’s activities in France.
The Celebrity Centre and a bookshop — the two branches of Scientology’s French operations — were ordered to pay a 600,000-euro (900,000-dollar) fine for preying financially on its followers in the 1990s.
Scientology’s leader in France Alain Rosenberg was handed a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros on the same charge.
A lawyer for Scientology’s French operations said he would appeal.
The Paris case was launched after a complaint from two women, one of whom says she was manipulated into handing over 20,000 euros for costly products, including an “electrometer” to measure mental energy.
