François Fillon, once the front-runner to become France’s president but who fell from grace after being accused of wrongfully putting his wife on the payroll in a “fake jobs” scandal, told a Paris court Thursday that the allegations had caused “irreparable damage”.
The former French prime minister gave a “short but rather bitter statement” as he addressed the court, FRANCE 24's CatherineTrent-Norris reported from the court.
“He said that although, technically in France, there was a presumption of innocence, he had already been found guilty by the court [of] the media three years ago, without any chance of appeal," she said.
In his statement, 65-year-old Fillon said: “The goal was clear: To prevent me from running in normal conditions in the presidential election” and that the “damages are irreparable”.
A favourite to win the Élysée Palace in the 2017 election, Fillon’s campaign was plunged into crisis when satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reported that his wife, Penelope, had been paid hundreds of thousands of euros for doing little work, including serving several years as his parliamentary assistant. The affair was dubbed Penelopegate.
The paper went on to report that Fillon had also employed two of his five children as parliamentary assistants while he was a senator, earning them a total of €84,000 between 2005 and 2007.