For the second time in a month, the Church of Scientology won a battle against its dissolution in Europe, despite a stiff sentence handed down by a French court against its operations.
In a verdict delivered Oct. 27, a Paris court fined the church’s Celebrity Center and its bookshop in the French capital nearly $900,000 for defrauding former members. It handed suspended prison sentences to four church leaders and fined two others. But the court stopped short of banning the operations in France, as demanded by the prosecution. A recent legal change bars courts there from dissolving organizations convicted of fraud.
The court’s ruling came less than a month after the European Court of Human Rights judged illegal a government ban against the Church of Scientology in Russia. In the binding ruling, the Strasbourg, France,-based court also awarded more than $20,000 in damages and costs to the plaintiffs in the case — two Russian Scientology branches.
Founded in the United States in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, the church claims 12 million adherents worldwide, including 45,000 in France. But unlike in the U.S., where it is recognized as a religion, it is listed as a cult in France and viewed with suspicion elsewhere in Europe. (RNS)
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