Suspended sentence requested for François Fillon in the case of his wife's fictitious jobs

A four-year prison sentence, fully suspended, was requested on Tuesday for former Prime Minister François Fillon in the case of his wife Penelope's fictitious employment.

The attorney general also requested a fine of €375,000 and a 10-year ban on the former 2017 presidential candidate, but his submissions set aside the one-year prison sentence imposed on May 9, 2022, by the Paris Court of Appeal. Following the hearing, which continued in the afternoon with the defense's arguments, a decision is expected to be handed down at a later date.

François Fillon, 71, has been definitively guilty since April 2024, notably of embezzlement of public funds, but the Court of Cassation has ordered a new hearing devoted solely to sentencing, in this case which has dragged on for months and brought his lead race for the presidency to a halt.

Returning to the Paris Court of Appeal on Tuesday, François Fillon spoke of the "moral injury" he suffered from the ineligibility sentence handed down against him, although he has no plans to return to politics.

"Nobody will take it out of my head that I was treated in a somewhat peculiar way," which "perhaps has something to do with the fact that I was a candidate in the presidential election," he said in court.

On appeal, on May 9, 2022, the former head of government was sentenced to four years in prison, including one year in prison, a fine of 375,000 euros and 10 years of ineligibility for embezzlement of public funds, complicity in the misuse of corporate assets and receiving stolen goods.

His wife, Penelope Fillon , was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended, and a fine of 375,000 euros, and his former deputy, Marc Joulaud, was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended, with disqualifications of two and five years respectively. The three defendants were also ordered to pay a total of approximately 800,000 euros in damages to the National Assembly.

Although it rejected the appeals of Penelope Fillon and Marc Joulaud, making their sentences final, the Court of Cassation, whose task is to rule not on the merits of the case, but on the correct application of the law, considered that the appeal court had not sufficiently justified the fixed part of the sentence handed down against François Fillon.

In addition, the high court ruled that the amount of €126,167 awarded to the National Assembly in damages for Penelope Fillon's contract as parliamentary assistant to her husband in 2012-2013 had been incorrectly assessed, as the appeals court acknowledged that Penelope Fillon had nevertheless performed certain tasks. Further damages are now definitively owed by the couple.

The affair broke out in January 2017 with the revelations in Le Canard Enchaîné, initiating an interminable political and media ordeal for François Fillon, and a campaign that included the banging of pots and pans and the "Give back the money" against the man who was then the candidate of the right and the center.

Launched on the trail of Mrs. Fillon's employment, the investigators heard from the gardener to local journalists, including former colleagues and prefects in office at the time, without finding much testimony establishing the reality of the work of the wife of the man who long posed as a herald of integrity.

He was eliminated in the first round of the presidential election, coming in third place with 20.01% of the vote, an unprecedented situation for a right-wing candidate under the Fifth Republic.

Targeted by another investigation opened in 2017 for embezzlement of public funds, François Fillon had agreed to repay nearly 70,000 euros, corresponding to the salary and social security contributions of a former parliamentary assistant, the writer and philosopher Maël Renouard, who had contributed to the writing of one of his books. As a result of this regularization, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office closed this preliminary investigation.