The Paris Criminal Court on Monday sentenced former ex-Prime Minister François Fillon to five years in prison, two of which were effective, and his wife Penelope to three years in prison. The couple appeals.
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Earlier in the day, the couple had been found guilty of fictional employment. Fillon has fictionally employed his wife and children as a parliamentary assistant and paid them generously.
The couple also has to repay the lower house of the French parliament more than a million euros.
Antonin Levy, the couple’s lawyer, has already announced that they will appeal the ruling. According to him, the verdict is unfair and the result of a plot against Fillon and his wife.
François Fillon was Prime Minister of his country from 2007 to 2012, under President Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2017 he made a bid for the presidency himself, and was then considered as a favorite. But after the scandal of the fraud leaked, Fillon was able to cross over his ambitions: he was killed in the first round. Shortly afterwards he took goodbye of politics.
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