PARIS (awp/afp) – Sentenced to two years in prison and a three-year suspended sentence at first instance, former Prime Minister François Fillon and his wife Penelope Fillon will hear the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal on Monday in the case of suspicions of fictitious jobs.
A few days after the presidential election, justice decides a second time in the file which had charred the campaign of the candidate of the right in 2017, a time favorite of the polls but finally eliminated in the first round.
François Fillon, 68, and Penelope Fillon, 66, who have always protested their innocence, will not be present at the delivery of the decision at 1:30 p.m., nor will the former substitute for the first in Sarthe, Marc Joulaud, 54 years, their lawyers told AFP.
Withdrawn from political life, Mr. Fillon announced at the end of February, in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to resign from his mandates on the boards of directors of the petrochemical giant Sibur and Zarubezhneft, a company specializing in hydrocarbons.
Sentenced in June 2020 by the court, the Fillon couple and the former deputy again faced the judges in November, maintaining the same defense, in a much less electric atmosphere than at the first trial.
On appeal, the public prosecutor’s office requested five years in prison, including one year under an electronic bracelet, as well as a fine of 375,000 euros against François Fillon, for embezzlement of public funds, complicity and concealment of misuse of corporate assets. .
Against Penelope Fillon, the prosecution demanded a two-year suspended prison sentence as well as a 100,000 euro fine and, against Marc Joulaud, a three-year suspended prison sentence. Ineligibility sentences of ten, two and three years respectively were also requested.
“Intangible” activities
A “bundle of clues” makes it possible to establish the “fictitiousness” of Penelope Fillon’s three jobs as parliamentary assistant to her husband and his deputy between 1998 and 2013, paid a total of 612,000 euros net, argued the public prosecutor, ironically on “impalpable” or even “evanescent” activities.
According to the prosecution, the hiring of Ms. Fillon as a “literary adviser” in 2012-2013 within the Revue des deux mondes (RDDM) was a “job of pure convenience” conceded by Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, owner of the publication and close to François Fillon.
The Advocates General, on the other hand, requested a partial condemnation for the collaboration contracts signed by the two eldest of the Fillons with their senator father between 2005 and 2007, and an acquittal for the non-declaration of a loan.
At the helm, the couple once again maintained that Penelope Fillon was carrying out “in the field” in Sarthe an “immaterial” but very “real” work.
Stigmatizing a file which “is reduced” like “a skin of grief”, the lawyer of François Fillon, Me Antonin Lévy, pleaded the release, citing “41 certificates (establishing) in a precise and detailed way the contribution of Mrs. Fillon ” .
“Media madness”
The defense of Penelope Fillon applied to camp a woman who was “wife” but also “collaborator”.
Her lawyers denounced a “media madness” around the “Penelopegate”, affirming that if she had certainly been “placardized” within the Revue des deux mondes, she had “worked” there.
Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, boss of Fimalac, was sentenced in a “guilty plea” procedure in 2018 for misuse of corporate assets, recognizing a partly fictitious contract.
At first instance, Mr. Fillon was sentenced, on June 29, 2020, to five years’ imprisonment, two of which were firm, a fine of 375,000 euros and ten years of ineligibility. This sentence, suspended by the appeal, remained flexible: he could have avoided prison.
His wife had been given a three-year suspended sentence, a 375,000 euro fine and two years of ineligibility and Mr. Joulaud, a three-year suspended sentence, a 20,000 euro suspended fine and five years of ineligibility.
The spouses and their co-defendant had also been ordered to repay more than one million euros to the National Assembly.
abb-alv/pa/tes