French magistrate to investigate Fillon ‘fake jobs’ allegations

A French magistrate will lead a full judicial inquiry into allegations that presidential candidate Francois Fillon had paid relatives for fake parliamentary assistant jobs.

Following a preliminary investigation opened on 25 January, the financial state prosecutor’s office announced on Friday that it had decided to recommend a judicial investigation on several issues, including the misappropriation of public funds.

A judge will be appointed to lead the inquiry and decide whether Fillon or his relatives should be charged in court. There is no fixed timeframe, and the inquiry could last for months.

Fillon had been one of the frontrunners in the French election that will take place in two rounds in April and May. However, his campaign as faltered in the wake of allegations that he had paid his wife Penelope at least €650,000 of public funds for a suspected fake parliamentary assistant job spanning 15 years. Financial prosecutors later branched out their investigations to whether he also gave two of his children highly paid and allegedly fake jobs from public funds while they were still students.

Fillon has denied wrongdoing, insisting that the jobs were real.

“If I am attacked, so relentlessly attacked, it is because I clash with the spineless consensus that only likes the right when it walks in the shadows,” he told a campaign rally in Maisons-Alfort.

His legal team said in a statement that it was confident that the investigation would find Fillon and his wife innocent.