Fillon campaign donations are paid to his own 'private party'

WhenWhen right-wing supporters make a donation to their now beleaguered candidate François Fillon they doubtless believe they are directly funding his election campaign. There is no reason they would think otherwise for it is on his official candidate's site that they download the donation form and it is to his campaign's Paris headquarters that backers send their cheques. It is only the 'payee' of the cheques, 'AFFR', which might give the suspicious pause for thought. For in reality the money collected on www.fillon2017.fr goes directly into the coffers of Fiillon's personal micro party – such mini-parties are commonly used by French politicians for developing ideas and fund raising.

Some sympathisers on the Right and centre right may be happy with this situation; others less so. What does seem clear is that the former prime minister is discreetly siphoning off campaign donations from generous supporters into his own personal organisation.

The true destination of the donations is only mentioned in the small print on the donation form. This points out that the 'AFFR' to whom the cheques are payable stands for nothing other than the funding association for “Force Républicaine”, the name of François Fillon's micro party.

During the primary election, when Fillon was battling to be the official presidential candidate for the right-wing Les Républicains, it was only natural that supporters' cheques went into the coffers of this micro party. This was how his rivals Alain Juppé and former president Nicolas Sarkozy operated too. But it is hard to see how Force Républicaine can justify cashing campaign donations after his victory in the primary on November 27th, when François Fillon officially became the spokesman for all sections of Les Républicains, as well as other minor political groupings on the Right such as the Christian democrat Parti Chrétien Démocrate. “It's madness!” one Parliamentarian and supporter of Sarkozy told Mediapart.

It is certainly true that the Les Républicains (LR) candidate finds himself in an unusual position in terms of campaign funds. Thanks to the two euro fee that voters had to pay to take part in the primary vote, the Right's presidential campaign has been handed a 9.4 million-euro jackpot. This means Fillon does not need to raise any other funds for his campaign as under French election funding rules the state will cover the rest of his permitted election spending.

At the beginning of December last year, therefore, the LR's treasurers were rubbing their hands, convinced that Fillon would be sending all surplus money their way. The Les Républicains party is still heavily in debt after the affair of the so-called Bygmalion false accounting affair it inherited from its predecessor the UMP in the 2012 election campaign, and may struggle to fund the Parliamentary elections scheduled for this June. Yet in January the money gathered from the 'Fillon 2017' site continued to enrich Fillon's mini party Force Républicaine rather than the mainstream Les Républicains itself.

Daniel Faquelle, the official LR treasurer and a Sarkozy supporter, made a blunt intervention on this issue during a meeting of regional party leaders last Sunday, January 29th January. Visibly irritated, and speaking in front of witnesses, he said that all campaign donations should go exclusively to the LR, so that the party could help Fillon if necessary and above all to fund candidates in June's elections, which could cost a total of three million euros.

Faquelle's annoyance was made greater by the fact that the Les Républicains party itself raised less money than expected in 2016, partly because supporters had already forked out two euros for each vote in the two-round primary contest. On the morning of Thursday, February 2nd, the candidate's site continued to direct funds to his micro party.

When contacted by Mediapart, Fillon's campaign treasurer Vincent Chriqui said Force Républicaine was within its rights to continue to take the money. “We're not in the process of siphoning off anything at all, but to raise funds for François Fillon's political actions and those of the Right and centre as a whole,” said Chriqui, a loyal Fillon supporter. “It can go through different channels.”

Pressed on why the cheques gathered as part of the campaign still went to the micro party rather than the main party, he replied: “[Tomorrow] there could be expenses for the candidate that are taken on by LR or by Force Républicaine. We haven't yet determined which expenses each is responsible for,” Chriqui added. He seemed to suggest that the issue was not urgent as the candidate himself would probably not need this additional financial support.

However, as the row over François Fillon and his wife Penelope's supposedly “fake jobs” continues, and as doubts on the Right grow about his candidacy, the revelation that the former prime minister is building up a war chest parallel to the coffers of Les Républicains is unlikely to calm tensions within the party.

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• The French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter