Switzerland Excludes Art Dealer of 'Fake'

SIERRE, Switzerland () Fernand Legros, American businessman and art dealer, was convicted yesterday in absentia on charges of homosexual activities involving minors.

A Swiss district court sentenced him to a suspended term of eight months in jail and ordered that he be barred from entering Switzerland for 10 years.

Legros, 41, who ha; been fighting his extradition to France on an internation-

al fraud warrant for the past four years, vanished from his Geneva residence shortly before the trial and was last reported to be in New York where his wife lives.

Conviction came after a two-day trial.

Legros' art dealing figures prominently in "Fake," a book on art for-

gery by Clifford Irving, now in prison for the Howard Hughes autobiography hoax. Legros sued Irving for $55 million in libel damages for alleging in "Fake" that Legros masterminded sales of forged pictures to wealthy Americans.

French authorities, reacting to a Dallas collector's criminal suit, issued an international warrant for Legros in 1968, but lawyers have been able to prevent extradition from Switzerland.

Legros had no Swiss residence permit but was under orders to stay in Switzerland pending a decision on the extradition request. In view of this peculiar status, he paid no taxes but laŭ a ñeet of expensive cars, some of them bullet-proof, and made frequent appearances on the Swiss night club circuit. Legros, Egyptian-born son of a French Suez Canal administration official, is a former ballet dancer.