“Pénélope was working on my local establishment”: at his appeal trial in Paris for suspicions of fictitious jobs for his wife, former Prime Minister François Fillon defended on Monday the “essential” nature of the missions carried out by his wife in the Sarthe. The former head of government, 67, in a dark blue suit and white shirt, began to respond in a considered voice to questions from the court in the early afternoon, punctuating his remarks with gestures above the bar , on which he put notes. On June 29, 2020, the former tenant of Matignon was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, including two firm and a fine of 375,000 euros.
His wife had been given a three-year suspended prison sentence and a 375,000 euro fine, his deputy Marc Joulaud a three-year suspended sentence and a 20,000 euro suspended fine. “The main role that I had entrusted to my wife is to be present on the ground”, to “create this personal bond, this bond of trust” with the inhabitants, repeats François Fillon on Monday. “It is a permanent work of networking the constituency (…) which, exercised over a long period, is irreplaceable.” Replace him at the meals of the elders, receive residents at their homes, sort the mail and detect “claims” or “broncas”…
“Indispensable” activities according to François Fillon
As many activities as Penelope Fillon carried out, argued her husband, which may seem far from national issues, but are “essential” because “it gives you your legitimacy” with voters. “Penelope brought her knowledge of personal, individual situations”, supported François Fillon, who also assured that she reread “all (her) important speeches”. “How many times did she make me change a point of view because it was too technocratic, too far from reality, too pessimistic?” The president of the court notes that very few people knew that she was his parliamentary assistant and underlines in the course of a question the “strong immaterial tone” of this “collaboration”.
“The fact that it is my wife who represents me, it is better that it is my collaborator”, answers François Fillon, who recognizes: “we could have done it differently”. Succeeding his wife, who maintained last week that she had done real work with her husband, he recalled that the practice of hiring a spouse was common at the time in the National Assembly, “also because the spouse embodies the presence of the parliamentarian in the field, which another collaborator does not embody”.
Retrial until November 30
The former right-wing presidential candidate in 2017, whose campaign was marked by the “Penelope Gate” explosion, also criticized an investigation that “should never have taken place” in this “context”. The “climate of heightened passion of a presidential campaign influences the testimonies”, which are loaded “with ulterior motives, whether positive or negative”, he argued.
Now retired, the former minister and senator is retried until November 30 alongside his wife and his former deputy for suspicion of “fictitious or overvalued” jobs of Penelope Fillon as parliamentary assistant between 1998 and 2013 , paid a total of 612,000 euros net. The Fillon spouses must also explain the hiring of two of their children as collaborators of their senator father between 2005 and 2007, as well as the contract of Penelope Fillon as “literary adviser”, in 2012 and 2013, at the Journal of the two worlds. François Fillon is finally prosecuted for having failed to declare a loan of 50,000 euros in 2012 to the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP).