Fillon accuses Hollande of involvement in plot against him
PARIS: French presidential candidate Francois Fillon accused President Francois Hollande on Thursday of being involved in what he alleges is a government plot to spread damaging media leaks about his affairs to destroy his chances of being elected.
The conservative Fillon, the campaign’s one-time frontrunner whose poll ratings have plunged amid a financial scandal, stepped up his allegations that he is a victim of a plot by launching a direct attack on the Socialist president.
“You have newspapers today which receive documents 48 hours after they were seized in searches, for example in my office in the National Assembly. Who gives them these documents? The state services,” he said in an interview with France 2 television. Asked if politicians or the justice system gave approval for this, Fillon said: “I will go much further. I blame the president of the republic.”
In response to Fillon’s latest allegations, the president’s office said Hollande “condemns with the greatest firmness the false allegations of Fillon.”
“The executive has never intervened in any judicial procedure and has always strictly respected the independence of the judiciary,” it said in a statement, adding that Fillon’s allegations brought ‘intolerable discord’ to the campaign.
Fillon demanded an inquiry into allegations which he said are included in a soon-to-be-published book, by two journalists, that all judicial phone taps that interested Hollande were sent to the president’s office. “It is a state scandal,” he said.