The trial against François Fillon, during which his sanctions in the case of his wife’s fictitious employment must be reviewed, was postponed on Monday, November 25 to April 29 by the Paris Court of Appeal, due to the absence of a lawyer. hospitalized. The former prime minister, 70, was finally found guilty by the Court of Cassation in April, but it ordered a new hearing to reassess his prison sentences, fine and ineligibility in this compelling case, which had thwarted his main career for the 2017 presidential election. election.
On appeal, on May 9, 2022, the former Matignon tenant was sentenced to four years in prison, including one year, a fine of 375,000 euros and ten years of disqualification for misappropriation of public funds. His wife, Penélope Fillon, was sentenced to two years in prison, in addition to a fine of 375,000 euros, and his former deputy, Marc Joulaud, to three years in prison, with respective disqualifications of two and five years. The three defendants were also ordered to pay a total of approximately 800,000 euros in damages to the National Assembly.
The Court of Cassation confirmed the sentences of the 69-year-old French-Welsh woman and the 57-year-old former MP for Sarthe. On the other hand, the high court, which controls compliance with the rules of law and not the merits of the cases, considered that the Paris Court of Appeal had not sufficiently justified the final part of the sentence imposed on François Fillon. Furthermore, the Court ruled that the amount of €126,167 awarded to the National Assembly as compensation for Penelope Fillon’s parliamentary assistant contract with her husband in 2012-2013 had been incorrectly assessed, to the extent that the appeal court had recognized that Mme Fillon had still performed certain tasks. Without a doubt, the Fillon couple owes other damages.
The matter erupted in January 2017 with the revelations of chained duckwhile François Fillon was a right-wing and centrist candidate in the presidential elections. A harbinger of integrity, he was impeached and ultimately eliminated in the first round.
