François Fillon’s bid to become president of France has suffered another serious blow with more allegations of financial impropriety in today’s Le Canard Enchaîné. Last week the investigative weekly, France’s equivalent of Private Eye, claimed that Fillon’s Welsh wife, Penelope, had been paid €500,000 over eight years for fictitious employment. In today’s paper it is alleged she actually received €900,000 with further accusations that a decade ago Fillon hired two of his five children as parliamentary assistants while he was a senator, the pair of them earning 84,000 euros.
The former Prime Minister romped to victory in November’s election to select a centre-right candidate to contest April’s election, and much of Fillon’s success was attributed to his transparency and honesty, the 62-year-old styling himself as a squeaky-clean antidote to his two biggest rivals, Alain Juppé and Nicolas Sarkozy.
It’s not illegal under French law for politicians to hire members of their family as assistants, but they have to actually do some work, and the evidence appears to be mounting that Fillon’s wife did little of that while pocketing the alleged €900,000.
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