Former French PM in the dock over ‘bogus’ jobs for his family

The trial of the former French prime minister François Fillon, his Welsh-born wife Penelope, and Marc Joulaud, the man who replaced Fillon in the National Assembly, will open in the criminal court in Paris on Monday afternoon.

The unprecedented case has eroded confidence in French institutions, by reinforcing populist assumptions about the privilege and dishonesty of politicians. It seems to confirm suspicions of incestuous links between high finance and political leaders. If Fillon got away with so much for so long, French voters ask, what are other politicians hiding?

Fillon would doubtless be president of France today, if the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchâiné had not revealed in January 2017 that he spent more than €1 million of taxpayers' money to pay his wife and two eldest children for allegedly bogus jobs as parliamentary assistants.

Fillon sued the Canard for propagating “false news”. That case was thrown out of court in November 2017.

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Fillon is also accused of asking the billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière to pay his wife for a fictitious job, after Fillon, as prime minister, had given Ladreit the grand-croix de la Légion d’honneur.

Fillon brought the Républicains party down around him. For the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic, the conservatives did not make it to the presidential run-off in 2017.

If convicted, Fillon could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, fined €150,000 and banned from public office

In Apocalypse Now: The Fillon Years – The Secret History of the French Right, Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, investigative reporters for Le Monde, detail Fillon's symbiotic relationship with the barons of the French bourse. Their book and the charge sheet enumerate the favours he is accused of doing for big business, and the alleged payback in lucrative consultancy fees and support for his presidential campaign.

Stingy

Fillon was as stingy towards French citizens as he was generous towards himself. In his presidential campaign, he was a socially conservative economic liberal who promised to suppress half a million civil service jobs and limit government medical coverage to life-threatening illnesses.

The trial is scheduled to last through March 11th. If convicted, Fillon could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison, charged €150,000 in fines and banned from public office.

The 150-page charge sheet details six blocks of allegedly illegal payments totalling €1,306,400.

It breaks down as follows: €408,400 which Fillon paid his wife between 1998 and 2002 and between 2012 and 2013; €645,600 which Fillon allegedly forced Joulaud to pay his wife between 2007 and 2012; €117,400 which Fillon paid his children while he was a senator, between 2005 and 2007, and €135,000 which Fillon asked Ladreit to pay Penelope.

In connection with these payments, Fillon is charged with misappropriation, complicity and possession of public funds by a person in public authority, complicity in fraud and possession of the proceeds of fraud. He is also charged with failing to report a €50,000 interest-free loan from Ladreit to the ethics authority.

Penelope Fillon is on trial for four of the same charges, while Joulaud is charged only with misappropriation of public funds by a person invested with public authority.

The Fillons’ case was significantly weakened in December 2018 when Ladreit received an eight-year suspended prison sentence and €375,000 fine in a plea-bargain settlement in which he admitted paying Penelope Fillon for a phony job.

The Fillons do not deny that Penelope and their children received the parliamentary funds. They kept her pay chits in a red folder which police found in a search of their manor house. Investigators also have bank statements showing that their children Marie and Charles transferred the monies they received to their parents, which is why the Fillon offspring are not being prosecuted.

‘Banal activities’

The Fillons claim that Penelope, Marie and Charles did real work for François and his replacement, Joulaud. The outcome of the trial will hinge on judges’ view of what constitutes genuine employment. Investigating magistrates say documents submitted by the couple “showed nothing, or confirmed the misuse of language which classified her most banal activities as the work of a parliamentary assistant”.

A former prefect of the Sarthe department described Joulaud as “Fillon’s front man”. The charge sheet notes that Fillon “set the level of [Penelope’s] remuneration,” which came out of Joulaud’s parliamentary allowance, at €5,200 per month, higher than Joulaud’s salary as a member of the National Assembly.

Penelope Fillon never applied for a badge to gain access to the National Assembly. “There was no sign of her participation in activities that should have been at the heart of her job as Marc Joulaud’s parliamentary assistant,” the charge sheet notes. “Emails were not copied to her, and she seems to have been totally uninformed of requests made to the deputy . . . Penelope Fillon’s job was simply payback for leaving the seat to his replacement, a way for François and Penelope Fillon to increase their income.”

François Fillon met Penelope Clarke in Le Mans in 1975, when both were university students. They were barely 20 when they set up house together. In 1984, the couple purchased the 15th-century Beauce Manor.

People have called me a hedonist, which is not totally false. I do things I like, which amuse me. I have no regrets

François’s younger brother, Pierre, married Penelope’s sister, Jane. Pierre organises the Le Mans 500 car race, which François often competes in. Penelope is as reticent as François is flirtatious and flamboyant. For years, he dyed his hair black. She let hers grow grey.

Penelope earned a degree in literature, but spent her life as a housewife and mother of five. Her frumpy clothes contrast with François's bespoke finery. Media reports say she has been devastated by the scandal. He bounced back, with a new, high-paying job as a senior partner in Tikehau Capital, a €3 billion investment fund.

“I try to live a nice, comfortable life,” Fillon recently told a friend, according to Le Monde. “People have called me a hedonist, which is not totally false. I do things I like, which amuse me. I have no regrets.”

In his youth, Fillon was an assistant to Joël Le Theule, parliamentary deputy from the Sarthe. Le Theule died suddenly in December 1980. Fillon was elected to succeed him the following June, becoming the youngest member of the National Assembly at the age of 27.

French parliamentarians dispose of a generous allowance to hire assistants. Fillon paid Penelope 30,000 francs – a sizeable sum at the time – just five months after he was elected. She received tens of thousands more for reports whose existence is questioned. The couple are not being prosecuted for payments prior to 1998 because these are covered by the statute of limitations.

Triple salary

Investigating magistrates refer to the Fillons’ “systematic appropriation” of public funds. From 1998, Penelope received a salary more than triple that paid to Fillon’s hard-working secretary.

It is clear from annotations on documents that Fillon was intent on using up his allowance for parliamentary assistants. “Everybody did it,” was the argument used by his defenders during the presidential campaign.

The Fillons keep horses, and François has to pay for his expensive clothes and hi-tech gadgets

Paying relatives for bogus jobs may have been common practice, but it was nonetheless illegal. The amounts involved, and the fact that Fillon is accused of forcing his replacement to pay his wife €645,600 during the five years he was prime minister, put Fillon’s use of parliamentary allowances in a whole new league.

When Fillon lost a post as a cabinet minister in 2005, he fell back on a senate seat, a significant drop in salary. Maintenance of the manor house is expensive. The Fillons keep horses, and François has to pay for his expensive clothes and hi-tech gadgets.

Again, Fillon turned to the parliamentary assistants’ allowance. His wife was already on Joulaud’s payroll at the National Assembly. So he salaried his children, first Marie, then Charles, both university students at the time.

In a 2007 interview with the Sunday Telegraph, likely to be used as evidence in the trial, Penelope Fillon said, “I have never been his assistant or anything like that.”

The National Assembly, of which Fillon was a member for more than 20 years, will participate in the trial as a civil plaintiff, demanding that the couple pay back €1,081,219.51 of the Assembly’s money which was paid to Penelope Fillon by her husband and Marc Joulaud.