Former French Prime Minister François Fillon was handed a four-year suspended prison sentence on Tuesday over a fake jobs scandal that derailed his 2017 presidential campaign. It marks the third appeal trial in the case since 2022.
Fillon, 71, had been found guilty in 2022 on appeal of embezzlement for providing a fake parliamentary assistant job to his wife, Penelope Fillon, that saw her being paid from public funds.
The court also ordered him to pay a fine of €375,000 ($433,000) and barred him from seeking elected office for five years.
The sentence was milder than the one handed down in 2022, when Fillon was sentenced to one year behind bars without suspension, the same fine, and 10 years of ineligibility.
France's highest appeals court - Court of Cassation - subsequently partially overturned this decision, finding that the prison sentence was insufficiently justified.
At the time, his British-born wife Penelope, then a local councillor, eceived a two-year suspended prison sentence, while his former deputy MP for the Sarthe department, Marc Joulaud, was given three years suspended.
Together, the three were ordered to pay approximately €800,000 in damages to the National Assembly.
Fillon's lawyer Antonin Lévy said Tuesday's decision "puts this case back in its proper place" after several years.
"There is no prison sentence, no electronic bracelet, François Fillon is a free man," Lévy said, adding that he would study the ruling before deciding on a possible new appeal to the Court of Cassation.
'Penelopegate'
The so-called "Penelopegate" scandal broke in January 2017 following revelations from satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné.
Over several articles, the newspaper said it had seen payslips showing that Penelope Fillon had been paid €680,000 as a parliamentary assistant to her husband between 1986 and 2013.
Investigators found little evidence that Penelope Fillon had worked at the National Assembly as her husband claimed and had she no pass card to enter the building.
Fillon, prime minister from 2007 to 2012 under right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy, was the conservative Republicans party candidate in the 2017 presidential election.
The scandal brought an abrupt end to his once-promising bid for the presidency after his campaign was dogged by regular protests marked by chanting of "Give back the money".
He was eliminated in the first round, finishing third with 20.01 percent of the vote – behind Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen – an unprecedented defeat for a right-wing candidate since 1958 and the founding of France's Fifth Republic.
In a separate 2017 case involving the misuse of public funds, Fillon agreed to repay nearly €70,000 linked to the employment of writer and philosopher Maël Renouard, who had helped author one of Fillon’s books.
Following the repayment, prosecutors dropped the investigation.
(with newswires)
