The former Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his wife are appealing in cassation. He was sentenced on appeal on Monday to four years in prison, including one year, a fine of 375,000 euros and ten years of ineligibility in the case of the fictitious jobs of his wife Penelope Fillon.
Pénélope Fillon was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 375,000 euros, her former deputy Marc Joulaud, a three-year suspended prison sentence – he is also appealing in cassation. Ineligibility sentences of two and five years were also pronounced once morest them.
The Fillon couple absent during the decision
The Paris Court of Appeal has ruled on the fate of the former Prime Minister and his wife, in the case of suspicion offictitious jobs which had exploded before the presidential election of 2017, beating the campaign for the Elysée of the candidate of the right, a time favorite but finally eliminated in the first round.
François Fillon, 68, and Penelope Fillon, 66, who have contested any fictitious employment since the beginning, were not present when the decision was announced. The couple and the former deputy were finally ordered to pay around 800,000 euros to the National Assembly, a civil party.
Retired from political life
At first instance, on June 29, 2020, the tenant of Matignon from 2012 to 2017, now retired from political life, had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, including two years, a fine of 375,000 euros and ten years of ineligibility. , for embezzlement of public funds, complicity and concealment of misuse of corporate assets.
His wife had been given a three-year suspended sentence, a 375,000 euro fine and two years of ineligibility, and Marc Joulaud, a three-year suspended sentence, a 20,000 euro suspended fine and five years of ineligibility.
The couple immediately made appel and returned to the stand in November, maintaining the same defense in a far less electric atmosphere than at the first trial. “I was not a fictitious deputy mainly concerned with money”, protested François Fillon in an introductory statement, deploring ” forty years of commitment (politics) erased by an article in a satirical newspaper and an incriminating investigation”. “My wife worked alongside me, that’s undeniable,” he said.
At the helm, his wife, Penelope Fillon, had great difficulty in explaining precisely what she was doing when she worked for him or for his deputy, Marc Joulaud, from June 2002. A “discreet” work, has she explained without convincing, which essentially consisted of rereading the speeches of her husband to whom she gave her “appreciation”, and of processing the mail sent by “people in a situation of great distress”.
