Socialist Party ally rebukes Fillon
• French presidential candidate urged to end campaign
French presidential candidate Francois Fillon was back under fire on Wednesday after new media reports were published of his alleged conflicts of interest while a party ally attacked a key part of his radical economic recovery programme.
As investigators broadened their inquiry into hundreds of thousands of euros that Fillon paid to his wife Penelope and children, his campaign chief denounced a daily “soap opera” of media leaks that he said was designed to hurt Fillon’s prospects of being elected president in May.
“It’s clear that these are orchestrated leaks,” Bruno Retailleau, Fillon’s campaign coordinator, told RTL radio.
“We’re being dragged into a soap opera,” he said.
Once the frontrunner, the 63-year-old conservative former prime minister has fallen to third place in polls and risks being eliminated in the April 23 first round of the election in favour of a runoff between farright leader Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist.
Apart from the sleaze allegations that have dogged his campaign since Le Canard Enchaine newspaper broke the scandal of “Penelope-gate” in late January, Fillon suddenly faced criticism from an influential member of his The Republicans party over his radical economic programme.
Speaking out against Fillon’s proposal to axe 500,000 public sector jobs, party grandee Francois Baroin said: “The state cannot force local authorities to reduce the workforce as proposed. I am telling Fillon, ‘watch out. danger ahead’,” said Baroin, who heads the Association of the Mayors of France.
A source close to the Fillon investigation said on Tuesday that the fraud inquiry into misuse of public funds had been widened to include suspicion that false documents had been presented to justify the employment of his family members.
A lawyer for Fillon’s Britishborn wife strongly denied these specific allegations. “Since Penelope Fillon’s past activities on behalf of her husband were real, all the documents pertaining to this work are also unquestionably genuine,” lawyer Pierre Cornut-Gentille said.
RUSSIAN INTRODUCTIONS
Additionally, Le Canard Enchaine reported in its latest edition that a Lebanese billionaire paid a company owned by Fillon $50,000 in 2015 to arrange introductions to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne.
That report drew a denial from the Kremlin. “It is what in English we call ‘fake news’,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The new reports add to a growing list of sleaze allegations against Fillon, which include a gift of luxury suits worth thousands of euros from a friend and pushed the Socialist Party to call on him to pull out of the race.
“The list of actions for which you are being reproached is long, too long, much too long. And it is getting longer all the time,” the party said. “Nothing can justify you maintaining your candidacy. We are asking you expressly to withdraw from the presidential election.”
Fillon has denied wrongdoing since the scandal broke in late January, though he has admitted errors of judgment, and fought off rebellion in his party’s ranks to maintain his bid for the Elysee. But he is suffering from comparison now with the case of the Socialist interior minister, Bruno le Roux, who quit on Tuesday over similar payments to members of his family within 24 hours of the media allegations surfacing — conduct which Fillon’s rivals are touting as honourable alongside Fillon’s intransigence.
Retailleau said the drip-feed of sleaze allegations was derailing the pre-election competition between candidates.
The favourite in opinion polls to win power on May 7 is now Macron, who is pro-European and seeks to transcend traditional left-versus-right political cleavages. He is tipped to convincingly beat Le Pen.
THE LIST OF ACTIONS FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING REPROACHED IS LONG, TOO LONG…. AND IT IS GETTING LONGER ALL THE TIME