It was the scandal that turned the 2017 French presidential election on its head, sweeping away the favourite and allowing relative newcomer Emmanuel Macron to romp home, reports FRANCE 24.
On Monday, former prime minister François Fillon goes on trial in Paris on suspicion of misappropriating over a million euros in public funds, paid to his Welsh-born wife Penelope for a suspected fake job as a parliamentary assistant between 1998 and 2013.
The allegations that Penelope, who is also charged in the case, was paid up to 10,000 euros ($10,800) a month for little to no work buried Fillon's presidential ambitions and caused his centre-right Republicans party to implode.
With the career politician defiantly refusing to stand aside, even after being charged, many right-wing voters drifted to the centrist Macron.
Fillon, 65, denies fiddling the system and insists that Penelope -- who faces charges including complicity in misuse of public funds -- did real work for him in his rural constituency of Sarthe.
But investigators say they have found little documentary evidence of her efforts.
The Fillons and a third defendant, Marc Joulaud, who stood in for Fillon in parliament when he was a cabinet minister and also hired Penelope as an assistant, face up to 10 years in prison.
In a TV interview last month, Fillon ruled out any political comeback, saying his priority was to defend his family's honour.
"Penelopegate" was all the more damaging for the French right given that Fillon had campaigned for president as a man of integrity, boasting of his scandal-free past over his former boss and rival Nicolas Sarkozy.
"There have been a lot of scandals in French political life, but in general they had to do with party financing," political historian Jean Garrigues told AFP, citing as an example the 2011 corruption conviction of former president Jacques Chirac.