Newspaper says Fillon scandal a family affair

French presidential candidate Francois Fillon not only paid his wife for an allegedly fake job as a parliamentary aide, but also employed two of the couple’s children for the same positions, a weekly newspaper is reporting.

The newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported yesterday that Fillon’s wife earned more money over a longer period than reported previously. Penelope Fillon made

830,000 ($1.2 million) over 15 years, not the 500,000 over eight years the weekly had reported last week.

Their daughter, Marie, and son, Charles, also were hired by Fillon as his parliamentary aides when he was a French senator from 2005 to 2007, earning 84,000 in total, the paper said, adding that their actual jobs were “very evanescent”.

Fillon said yesterday that he was the victim of a “very professional slander campaign”.

Fillon has said he paid two of his children, “who were lawyers”, for “specific assignments” when he was a senator.

However, Marie and Charles still were in law school when they worked for their father, French news media reported. And according to Le Canard Enchaine, they were paid not for “specific assignments”, but two fulltime jobs.

Fillon has also said he first officially employed his wife in 1997 and that she had worked for him without pay before then.

The weekly newspaper says Penelope Fillon first worked as her husband’s paid parliamentary aide in 1988-1990, earning the equivalent of 83,000 over three years. The Canard also says Fillon rehired her for one-and-a-half years after he quit as Prime Minister and went back to a seat in Parliament in May 2012.

Fillon has said she was on his payroll for six months during that period.

Last week, the newspaper re- ported Penelope also earned

100,000 as a literary consultant for a literary magazine, La Revue des Deux Mondes. The paper suggested that job also was a ruse, saying she wrote only two reviews in 2012-2013.

All figures cited by Le Canard Enchaine were pre-tax salaries.

Fillon and his wife are under a preliminary probe by France’s national financial prosecutors for suspicions of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds after Le Canard Enchaine first disclosed the socalled “Penelopegate” last week.

The couple was separately questioned by investigators for five hours on Tuesday.