France, Dec. 2 -- The court in the Paris suburb of Nanterre opened proceedings this week in an extensive fraud case centred on an alleged attempt to extract more than €19 billion from TotalEnergies.

Seven defendants - amongst them a former senior magistrate, two well-known Parisian lawyers and figures linked to the late businessman Andre "Dede la sardine" Guelfi - are set to appear over the next three weeks as the court unravels the tangled origins of a controversial 2009 arbitration bid.

The case dates back more than a decade and a half, when in 2011, TotalEnergies filed a complaint with prosecutors in Nanterre, claiming it had been the target of an elaborate fraud attempt.

The company argued that an arbitration procedure launch...