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Update
Suspected of fictitious jobs, the Fillon couple are back in court for an appeal trial, Monday, November 15. At first instance, the former Prime Minister was sentenced to five years in prison, including two years, and ten years of ineligibility.
In March 2020, they had left the court without a word, stunned by the sentence to five years in prison, including two years closed and ten years of ineligibility for François Fillon, and three years in prison for his wife, Penelope Fillon. . The couple immediately appealed. In the midst of the presidential campaign, the Fillon affair erupted on January 27, 2017 with the publication of an article in Le Canard Enchaîné. The satirical newspaper had revealed that his wife had received more than 600,000 euros for an almost non-existent parliamentary assistant job.
The revelations continued. Her children had also been employed as parliamentary assistants between 2005 and 2007 for 100,000 euros raw. Then there was the discovery of the allegedly fictitious post at the Revue des Deux Mondes. Penelope Fillon was reportedly paid 3,500 euros per month for two published literary notes. The national financial prosecutor’s office was then seized, and Francois Fillon had been indicted six weeks before the first round. The candidate will finish third in the election.
In January 2020, shortly before his first trial, the former Prime Minister returned to the facts. “Penelope was my first and my most important collaborator, he said on the set of France 2. There are many testimonies of his participation, that’s what the trial will show.“ His lawyer, Me Antonin Levy, affirms that there are still about fifty testimonies demonstrating the reality of this job. During the appeal trial, the defense will remain on its line: that of a political plot aimed at removing candidate Fillon at all costs.