A French court on Monday found former premier Francois Fillon guilty of charges of creating a fake job for his wife, using taxpayer money.
Fillon, 66, was accused of creating a position that paid his wife over €1 million ($1.13 million) in public funds — a charge that cost him his 2017 presidential bid. Fillon's wife, Penelope, was also found guilty of being complicit in the case.
Read more: France's ex-premier Francois Fillon to face trial over fake jobs
Fillon was sentenced to five years in prison, three of which were suspended, as well as a €375,000 fine. He has also been banned from running for elected office for 10 years. His wife was handed a three year suspended sentence and fined the same amount.
Shortly after the ruling, their lawyer announced they would appeal the sentence.
A scandalous article
Fillon's 2017 presidential campaign took a nosedive when satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine reported that he had paid his wife, Penelope, for serving as his parliamentary assistant from 1998 until 2013.
The public outcry over the scandal, which became known as "Penelopegate," was loud enough that significant doubts were voiced about the eligibility of Fillon himself — leading to a sharp decline in the opinon polls.
Read more:French presidential candidate Fillon battles on despite formal corruption charges
Francois Fillon is struggling to rebuild his presidential campaign after accusations that he hired family members in "fake jobs". But what exactly has Fillon been accused of - and how has he defended himself?
Image: picture-alliance/abaca/A. RobertMany expected Francois Fillon to be a shoo-in for the presidency. The former French prime minister easily won the conservative primary with 67 percent of the vote. But then Penelopegate hit. Weekly newspaper Canard Enchaine reported that Fillon's wife Penelope and two of his children had received close to one million euros in salaries from Fillon, paid by the state. Fillon's popularity tumbled.
It is not illegal in France to hire family members as parliamentary assistants - provided they have real jobs. Fillon's wife was paid 830,000 euros ($900,000) as a parliamentary assistant for 15 years, working (or - as some have suggested - "working") for Fillon and his replacement in parliament. Police are currently investigating whether Penelope provided services for the salary she received.
Reporters also revealed that Fillon paid his two oldest children 84,000 euros for working as assistants between 2005 and 2007. Fillon argued that he had hired Marie and Charles Fillon for their legal expertise - though the two were still in law school when they had jobs with their father.
Penelope was also employed at an art magazine from May 2012 to December 2013, where she was paid roughly 5,000 euros a month. The owner of the magazine had previously been recommended for France's highest honor, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, by then-prime minister Francois Fillon. Fillon has said that these two facts were unrelated.
Fillon has repeatedly denied charges that he used "fake jobs" to enrich his family. He has said that he employed his wife and children because he trusted them and accused the media of running a smear campaign against him. Nevertheless, Penelopegate has severely damaged the campaign of the 63-year old, who has sold himself to French voters as an honest family man keen on cutting public spending.
The accusations against Fillon are hardly the first of their kind in France. Ex-President Jacques Chirac was found guilty in 2011 of employing party members in "fake jobs" as mayor of Paris. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is being investigated for illegal campaign financing, and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is suspected of paying officials in her far-right party with EU funds.
The paper also reported that he had employed two of his five children as parliamentary assistants while he was senator, between 2005 and 2007, paying them a combined €117,000. However, there was no evidence that either the wife or children did any work.
He was additionally accused of getting the millionaire owner of a literary magazine to pay his wife €135,000 for "consulting work."
Pleading innocence
Welsh-born Penelope Fillon told the court she spent a lot of time sorting her husband's mail, attending public events near their rural manor and gathering information for his speeches. However, she was quoted in a 2016 newspaper interview as saying, "Until now, I have never gotten involved in my husband's political life."
She also said that she didn't remember well the contracts that she had had as a parliamentary aid.
Fillon, who served as prime minister under former president Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012, has consistently insisted on his innocence.
lc/rt (AFP, Reuters)
