Fillon affair

The Fillon affair (also the Penelope Fillon affair or Penelopegate) is a political-financial scandal involving immediate family of French politician François Fillon given paid jobs that involved no or very little actual work. The case surfaced during the campaign for the 2017 French presidential election which Fillon, the candidate of the Republicans after winning the primary of the right and centre, was at the time strongly favored to win.

The affair began when the 25 January 2017 edition of satirical weekly Le Canard enchaîné alleged that Penelope Fillon, wife of François Fillon, received €500,000 between 1998 and 2007 and in 2012 for a no-show job as a parliamentary assistant to first her husband and then his substitute Marc Joulaud. It also claimed that she was paid €100,000 as a literary adviser to the Revue des deux Mondes. The absence of evidence of work by Penelope Fillon and her distance from political life led the newspaper to suspect that these jobs were fictitious. The same day, the national financial prosecutor (Parquet national financier, or PNF) opened a preliminary investigation into embezzlement and misuse of public funds.

On 1 February, an article in the following issue of Le Canard enchaîné claimed that, including the years 1988 to 1990 and 2013, the total wages Penelope Fillon collected as a parliamentary assistant were in fact €813,440. In addition, the weekly revealed that two of the couple's children, Charles and Marie Fillon, received €84,000 while employed from 2005 to 2007 as assistants to their father, then a Senator.

On 17 February, François Fillon reneged on his previous promise that he would drop his bid if he was placed under formal investigation and announced he would maintain his candidacy regardless. On 14 March, he was placed under formal investigation for misuse of public funds, embezzlement, and failure to comply with transparency requirements. On 16 March the investigation was extended to "aggravated fraud, forgery, falsification of records" and influence-peddling, as investigators raised concerns that seized documents were forged in order to provide evidence of tangible work by Penelope Fillon.

After several years of investigations and a trial lasting almost six months, he was convicted on June 20, 2020. On June 29, 2020, Penelope was also convicted. François was sentenced to five years,^[1] while Penelope received a sentence of three years.^[2] They both appealled their sentences. The sentences were reduced to four years for François and two years for Penelope by a French appeals court on May 9, 2022.^[3]