French ex-Prime Minister François Fillon and his Welsh wife have received jail sentences in a "fake jobs" case, reports BBC News.
The conservative politician was found guilty of paying Penelope Fillon 831,400 euros (£760,000; $938,000) for work she never did as his assistant.
He was sentenced to five years in prison, three of them suspended. She was given a three-year suspended term.
The scandal ruined his presidential bid in 2017. Both have appealed, blocking Fillon's immediate detention.
The 66-year-old is the most senior French political figure to receive a custodial sentence since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
Coronavirus masks obscured the couple's expressions as the verdicts were read out.
Delivering the decision in a Paris courthouse on Monday, the presiding judge said: "The payment was disproportionate to the work done. Mrs Fillon was hired for a position that was without use."
She was found guilty of complicity to embezzle and conceal public funds.
Both were given fines of 375,000 euros ($423,000). In addition, the couple were ordered to return more than 1 million euros to the National Assembly, which employed Penelope Fillon from 1998 to 2013.
Her husband was also banned from public office for 10 years.
The terms matched the prosecutors' sentence requests.
[François Fillon] has been in politics for decades. After serving as an MP, senator, and in a number of ministerial roles, he became France's prime minister between 2007 and 2012 under then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Ahead of the 2017 presidential election, he won the centre-right Republican party's presidential primary, and in January 2017 was the clear front-runner in the polls.
But his bid for the top job fell apart later that month.
Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical magazine, alleged that his wife - formally employed as his parliamentary assistant for about six years in the 1990s and 2000s - never actually did her job. What is more, she was paid 831,400 euros in the role.
He denied the allegations. He said his opponents were trying to sabotage his campaign, and vowed to press on with the election.
As the scandal grew he apologised "profusely" for employing family members, saying that though legal the practice had caused "mistrust".
But his poll ratings dropped sharply. He came third in the first round of voting, missing out on the second-round run-off.