The French consider Scientology a cult. From the BBC:
True to form, there's a creepy side to the story:Prosecutors had asked for the group's French operations to be dissolved and more heavily fined, but a legal loophole prevented any ban.
Instead, a Paris judge ordered the Church's Celebrity Centre and a bookshop to pay a 600,000-euro fine....
Unlike the US, France has always refused to recognise Scientology as a religion, arguing that it is a purely commercial operation designed to make as much money as it can at the expense of often vulnerable victims, the BBC's Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.
The court was unable to impose a ban because of a legal amendment that was passed just before the trial began, preventing the banning of an organisation convicted of fraud.
However, that amendment has now been changed.
"It is very regrettable that the law quietly changed before the trial," Georges Fenech, the head of the Inter-ministerial Unit to Monitor and Fight Cults, told French TV.
"The system has now been put in place by parliament and it is certain that in the future, if new offences are committed, a ban could eventually be pronounced," he said.
