French investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reports that no obvious evidence of work exists to justify the employment as a well-paid parliamentary assistant in 2002-2003 of Nicolas Sarkozy's then wife Cécilia, who was hired by Sarkozy's stand-in as Member of Parliament after he was appointed interior minister.
Claims have emerged that prosecutors were pressured to move fast in a fraud inquiry against former prime minister François Fillon, his main right-wing rival in France's 2017 presidential race.
The French government is planning to introduce compulsory monthly justifications from those receiving unemployment benefits that they have actively sought to find a job without which their benefits will be suspended, reported investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné citing an internal labour ministry document.
When prosecutors announced in October 2017 that they were not pursuing an investigation into the financial allegations surrounding Richard Ferrand, who is now president of Emmanuel Macron's political party at the National Assembly, it seemed the end of the matter. However, an analysis of the preliminary investigation report by Mediapart shows that from start to finish Ferrand looked after his partner's interests in a property deal with a mutual health firm, even though he was managing director of that company at the time. Now anti-corruption groups are calling for an independent judge to re-open the case and investigate. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
Bullets and threatening letters have been sent to four judges plus journalists at two media organisations, including Mediapart. Of the judges who have been singled out, one is the head of the national financial crimes prosecution unit, and the other three are the judges who have been designated to investigate the 'fake jobs' allegations involving right-wing presidential candidate François Fillon and his wife Penelope. The other media outlet that received a threatening letter and a .22 calibre Long Rifle bullet was Le Canard Enchaîné, the weekly investigative newspaper that first broke the Fillon story. Matthieu Suc reports.
A Kremlin spokesman said revelations that French conservative presidential candidate François Fillon received, via his consultency firm, 50,000 dollars to introduce a Lebanese pipeline construction tycoon to Russian President Vladimir Putin 'is what in English we call fake news'.
Public prosecutors on Wednesday announced an investigation into suspected 'misappropriation of public funds' just hours after weekly magazine Le Canard Enchaîné revealed that the wife of former PM François Fillon, now conservative candidate for the presidency, was paid 500,000 euros over eight years as his parliamentary assistant.
Former prime minister and now conservative presidential election candidate François Fillon is under increasing pressure to prove that his British-born wife Penelope did actually complete work as a parliamentary assistant to him for which, reported weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, she was paid a total of 500,000 euros from parliamentary funds.
French interior minister Claude Guéant has dropped the libel action he launched against Mediapart last year over the publication of an editorial denouncing an espionage campaign targeting journalists that had been organized from within the offices of the French presidency. The case was due to be heard in october, when Mediapart intended calling President Nicolas Sarkozy to the witness stand. Michel Deléan reports.
