The rightwing French presidential candidate François Fillon has apologised for hiring his wife as a parliamentary assistant, admitting he made an “error” but refusing to quit the race.
Fillon, once seen as a frontrunner to face the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen in the final round of the presidential election in May, has seen his ratings drop after anti-fraud prosecutors opened an investigation into allegations that he paid his wife and children large amounts of taxpayers’ money for fake parliamentary assistant jobs.
At a press conference on Monday, he refused to stand down as a candidate, insisting the jobs he gave his family were real and justified and that he had done nothing illegal. But he nonetheless offered his apologies to the French people.
He said he had hired his family members because he trusted them but he recognised that such practices, while legal and commonplace years ago, “create distrust nowadays”. He added: “It was an error; I profoundly regret it and I apologise to the French.”
Fillon insisted that his wife Penelope’s earnings were justified and said he had been the victim of a media and leftwing plot to destabilise his presidential bid.
He said nothing would make him abandon the presidential race, reiterating that only if criminal charges were brought against him would he stand down. He said his party, Les Républicains, had no plan B and he was the only possible candidate who could run.
It is legal for French MPs to hire family members as long as the person is genuinely employed. But French prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into the possible misuse of public funds to determine whether or not Penelope Fillon in fact did any work for her husband. That inquiry has now been extended to look at roles Fillon gave his children while he was a senator.
Fillon’s presidential bid has been floundering since it emerged that his British-born wife was paid more than €800,000 from public funds between 1998 and 2013 as a parliamentary assistant. He also hired two of his children as assistants, paying them €84,000 pre-tax between 2005 and 2007.
Penelope Fillon had often said in the past that she played no major role in her husband’s political life. Asked about a video of a Sunday Telegraph interview from 2007 in which Penelope Fillon said of her husband, “I have never actually been his assistant or anything like that”, François Fillon stressed semantics. He said: “She wasn’t my subordinate”, adding that she was his work partner and collaborator.
Fillon was asked about inconsistencies in his public comments and why he had initially said on French television that his wife had begun working for him years later than she in fact did. He admitted he had been “imprecise”, saying it had taken him five days to gather all the payslips together.
He said he had been slow to react to the scandal because “I took these accusations like a punch to the stomach. I never expected so much violence.” He said it took him a while “to work out that the sky had fallen on my head”.
Fillon’s attempt to go on a counter-offensive came as Le Monde revealed new elements relating to the preliminary investigation. The French newspaper reported that investigators were examining Fillon’s ties to Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, the billionaire businessman owner of the literary magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, who is also reported to have allegedly paid Penelope Fillon €100,000 for doing little work.
The investigators are looking at whether the businessman paid Penelope Fillon about €5,000 a month pre-tax between May 2012 and December 2013 in return for being recommended by Fillon for France’s highest honour, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, in 2010. This could be classed as influence-peddling.
Fillon has insisted his wife’s job at the review was “real”. In a statement to AFP, Ladreit de Lacharrière said Penelope Fillon’s work for the magazine “was in no way fictitious” and said he was “very shocked” to see it being linked to the Légion d’honneur. Le Monde quoted Fillon’s lawyer as saying there was no link between the award and payments made to Penelope Fillon.
The newspaper also reported that Fillon had told investigators that his student son, whom he paid from public funds as an assistant in the senate, was at the time carrying out work preparing Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. The paper observed that rules on senate and parliament assistants forbid them from taking part in election campaign work and this would have been illegal.
Fillon told the press conference: “My son never took part in the presidential campaign”, adding that his son’s job had been to prepare briefing notes.
Fillon also gave details of the consulting firm he set up in 2012 at the end of his five-year term as prime minister. The Canard Enchaîné, which broke the story of Penelope Fillon’s parliamentary assistant jobs, had reported that the company paid Fillon an after-tax salary of €757,000 since 2012. Opponents had demanded he reveal the source of the money.
During the press conference, Fillon listed the company’s key clients and said no Russian business had paid him, nor the Russian government, saying that all conferences he gave in Russia were free.
Asked about further claims that he pocketed €25,000 in funds earmarked for senate assistants between 2005 and 2007, Fillon said this type of thing was a longstanding “practice in political life” that he felt was “no longer accepted by the French people”. He said he had done nothing illegal and was not under investigation over it.
MPs in Fillon’s party have begun to question whether he is becoming an electoral liability, after having built his campaign on a carefully crafted image as a sleaze-free honourable country gentleman who wanted to slash public spending and cut public jobs. One poll last week showed 76% of French voters were not convinced by his response to the scandal.
Fillon claimed rightwing voters still supported him and said he would go on the offensive this week with a series of public appearances across France.
