French woman given 8-1/2 years for Stern's murder

* Cecile Brossard sentenced to 8-1/2 years for murder

* Confessed to 2005 killing of French banker Edouard Stern

GENEVA, June 18 - A woman who killed banker Edouard Stern, a banking scion and one of France's richest men, after sado-masochistic sex and an argument over $1 million was sentenced on Thursday to 8-1/2 years in prison for murder.

Cecile Brossard, 40, has already served four years in preventive custody since confessing to killing her lover.

"The court sentences Cecile Brossard to eight years and six months in prison for murder," said Judge Alessandra Cambi.

A jury of six women and six men took part in the one-week trial that revealed intimate details of the couple's long-term relationship.

Stern, 50, was found dead in his luxury flat in Geneva on March 1, 2005, with sex toys littering his bedroom full of millions of dollars worth of antiques.

Four bullets were found in his body which was dressed in a head-to-toe flesh-coloured latex outfit from the previous night.

Brossard confessed to killing Stern with his own revolver following an argument over $1 million he put into her Swiss bank account, funds she had demanded as "proof of his love for her."

The artist testified that she shot her masked lover between the eyes after he told her: "One million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore." He was shot twice in the head and twice in the torso.

LAKE GENEVA

She also admitted to having cleaned up the crime scene and thrown the murder weapon -- later recovered -- into Lake Geneva before fleeing to Italy and then Australia.

"Her cynical, deliberate and manipulative behaviour was not the one of a reasonable woman who commits a crime under an excusable emotion or despair," the jury said on Wednesday.

It rejected the defence's argument that Brossard committed a crime of passion in a moment of extreme distress.

However, it recognised a "slightly reduced responsibility" on the part of Brossard, whom a psychiatrist testified has a borderline personality and suffered sexual abuse as a child.

Geneva's chief prosecutor, Daniel Zappelli, had asked for an 11-year prison sentence. The maximum sentence was 20 years.

Factoring in the time already served with good behaviour Brossard could only have to serve two more years and may be freed in mid-2011.

Stern family lawyer Marc Bonnant, who told the court earlier this week that Brossard had returned the $1 million which she had initially refused to give back, on Thursday praised the sentencing as "a just and even-handed decision."

"The court was right to remind us that it (murder) is the supreme crime," he said at the courthouse in Geneva's Old Town.

Stern, the 38th richest man in France, counted President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist politician Laurent Fabius among his friends. The defence portrayed him as having been cruel towards Brossard, allegedly promising her marriage.

He was once heir apparent to his father-in-law, Michel David-Weill of the investment bank Lazard Freres.