France’s lying ex-PM and his British wife get jail for £1m fraud
THIS driver had a day to forget when his lorry-load of vans got wedged under the roof of a petrol station. The transporter tried to squeeze under a gap that was not there –
FRANCE’S former prime minister and his British wife have been given prison sentences for fraud involving nearly £1million of taxpayers’ cash.
Paris Correctional Court ruled yesterday that Francois and Penelope Fillon created fake jobs that paid Mrs Fillon out of public funds.
Mr Fillon, 65, was jailed for five years, with three of them suspended.
His wife, 64, was given a three-year suspended term.
The devout Catholics were set to be France’s president and first lady in 2017, but the “Penelopegate” scandal ended conservative Fillon’s hopes.
Independent candidate Emmanuel Macron became the new head of state.
Distorted
A protracted court case proved Mrs Fillon had pretended to be her husband’s parliamentary assistant for 15 years, despite never having visited the National Assembly.
She also said she was a “literary adviser” to a magazine owned by a Fillon friend and was paid thousands – but never visited its Paris offices.
In reality the solicitor’s daughter, originally from Llanover, South Wales, spent most of her time on the couple’s country estate in Sable-sur-Sarthe, south-west of Paris, bringing up their five children.
Prosecutor Aurelien Letocart said Mrs Fillon had presented “a very distorted version of reality” to the court. He said the Fillons’ evidence
wrecking the building and his cargo of new-looking vehicles. It resulted in one of the vans dangling on two front wheels, with
conveyed bad faith and was “an insult to common sense”.
Mr Letocart said Mrs Fillon had “no email, no diary, no presence in the National Assembly, no consistency in her employment contracts”.
He said: “In these conditions it is difficult to grasp the professional space that Penelope Fillon could have occupied.” Earlier, when asked about her reluctance to visit parliament, Mrs Fillon said: “For this job, I didn’t need to go to the National Assembly.”
Asked what she actually did at the family home, she said: ‘It was precise, punctual missions, especially at the beginning.”
She said she opened and sorted driver was not under the effect of alcohol or drugs – but had simply failed to appreciate the height restriction at the petrol station.
It took firefighters several hours to free the lorry and vans. letters, read newspaper articles for Mr Fillon and compiled short reports.
As well as the jail terms, prosecutors called for the couple to each be fined £328,000 and for a 10-year ban on Fillon taking a political role.
MP Marc Joulaud, 53, who did Mr Fillon’s constituency work when he was prime minister for five years until 2012, received a two-year suspended sentence for renewing Mrs Fillon’s fake contracts and increasing her salary, despite her doing nothing.
All three defendants were tried for embezzlement of public funds, fraud, theft and criminal complicity.
Mrs Fillon went to King Henry VIII School in Abergavenny and studied modern languages in London and law at Bristol University.
She met Fillon while working as a teaching assistant and they married in his home town of Le Mans.