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Reuters
Fillon was Prime Minister in 2007-2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy, and in 2017 had every chance of becoming president of France
Former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon was sentenced to five years in prison (three years of them probation) in a case of fictitious employment of his wife. A court in Paris found Fillon guilty of embezzlement of public funds. The scandal erupted in 2017 and put an end to the political ambitions of the favorite of the presidential race.
Wife of Fillon Penelope sentenced to three years probation for complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds.
Spouses will also have to pay a fine – 375 thousand euros each.
The court found that Fillon paid his wife 831 thousand euros for work that she did not actually perform.
“The payments were disproportionate to the work done,” said the presiding judge.
Lawyers Francois and Penelope Villon said they would appeal the court decision.
The French prosecutor opened a criminal case against Fillon in mid-March 2017 after publishing in Canard Enchaine, which alleged that Fillon, being a parliamentarian in the 2000s, made his wife his fictitious assistant in parliament and paid her hundreds of thousands of euros.
The publication appeared at the height of the presidential race, whose favorite was Francois Fillon, a candidate from the center-right Republican Party.
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Fillon himself and his wife denied all charges. The couple insisted that Penelope Fillon really worked as an assistant to her husband. However, the media wrote that Penelope Fillon did not even have a pass to parliament, and almost no one among the members of parliament knew that she worked there.
Investigators also became interested in payments worth more than 80 thousand euros (86 thousand dollars), which, according to Canard Enchaine, were received by the children of Fillon, Marie and Charles. Fillon then claimed that it was a payment for legal services. But at that time, according to the publication, neither the son nor the daughter of Fillon had the status of a lawyer.
The investigation also had questions about what work Penelope Fillon did in the literary magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, owned by billionaire and family friend Marc Ladre de Lacharrier. According to the publication Canard Enchaine, from the magazine she received from May 2012 to December 2013 3,5 thousand euros per month.
Fillon called the charges against him politically motivated and did not refuse to continue the struggle for the presidency. However, the rating of Fillon due to the scandal with the alleged fictitious employment of his wife was badly damaged.
As a result, in the first round of elections, Fillon took third place, losing to Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
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