PARIS | Fri Nov 25, 2011 10:55am EST
PARIS (Reuters) - Two units of France's Total have appealed a Djibouti court sentence to pay 204 million euros ($272 million) in damages and fines in a pollution case dating back to 1997, a spokesman for the group said on Friday.
The pollution involved oil leaks from an old pipeline network that reached the sea when the authorities started work to expand Djibouti port.
"Criminal prosecutions were launched in 1997 against the two Total subsidiaries in the country, Total Djibouti and Total Marketing," the spokesman said, adding that each subsidiary would have to pay damages of 100 million euros and a 2 million euro fine.
The court made the ruling on November 17, and the two subsidiaries appealed on November 19.
According to French weekly Le Point.fr, Total has three months to clean up the sites hit by the pollution or face daily fines of several thousand euros.
($1 = 0.7506 euros)
(Reporting By Benjamin Mallet; Writing by Muriel Boselli; Editing by Will Waterman)
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