Former French conservative prime minister François Fillon and his British wife Penelope, who in 2020 were handed five and three years in jail respectively for embezzling public funds in a fake jobs scam in parliament, were on Monday given shorter prison terms by a Paris appeals court.
At the end of an eight-day trial in Paris of five prefects charged with embezzling public funds, prosecutors have demanded a 30-month suspended jail sentence and a 75,000-euro fine for Nicolas Sarkozy’s former chief of staff and ex-interior minister, Claude Guéant, who they described as playing “the leading role” in a scam that siphoned off 210,000 euros in cash reserved for police investigations. Michel Deléan reports.
Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, high-living son of the president of Equatorial Guinea and vice-president of the country, wanted by France and the United States on charges of money-laundering and embezzlement, is on the point of purchasing one of the world’s largest luxury yachts (pictured) for the sum of 200 million dollars. Mediapart has discovered that a company was especially set up in Equatorial Guinea to carry out the acquisition of the vessel from the family of the late Saudi crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. It is a remarkable snub to a French judicial investigation into so-called 'ill-gotten gains' of several African leaders and which has uncovered compelling evidence that Obiang Mangue and his father have acquired massive personal fortunes through illegally stripping the assets of the small west-central African state, where an estimated 75% of the population live below the poverty line. Fabrice Arfi reports.
