PARIS: France’s Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux was fighting for political survival on Tuesday after it emerged that he hired his two teenage daughters as parliamentary assistants, earning comparisons with scandal-hit presidential hopeful Francois Fillon.
Le Roux was to meet with Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to provide explanations over the latest revelations to engulf an already embattled French political class.
The TMC channel reported on Monday night that Le Roux gave his daughters several short-term contracts between 2009 and 2016 for which they earned a total of €55,000 (Dh218,273).
The girls were still in school when he first hired them and continued doing work for him — paid with public funds — when they were in college.
Le Roux, who has been in the interior post only since December after taking over from Cazeneuve, told TMC his daughters had worked for him during their summer holidays and denied any wrongdoing.
French lawmakers are allowed to hire family members as assistants, as long as they do real work.
Fillon has been charged with misuse of public funds for giving his wife and two of his children suspected fake jobs as parliamentary aides for which they were paid hundreds of thousands of euros.
The conservative presidential candidate also insists he did no wrong, presenting “Penelopegate”, as the affair has been dubbed after his wife’s name, as an attempted “political assassination”.
