Paris: The wife of France’s conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon was charged Tuesday with complicity in the abuse of public funds in a scandal that has engulfed her husband’s campaign.
He has already been charged in the case involving allegedly fictitious jobs as a parliamentary aide for which the Welsh-born Penelope Fillon was paid hundreds of thousands of euros.
The 61-year-old Penelope was also charged over a salary she received from a literary magazine owned by a billionaire friend of her husband’s, Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere.
She has told police she never stepped foot in the offices of the Revue des Deux Mondes, according to a report in the Journal du Dimanche weekly.
The new blow comes less than four weeks before French voters go to the polls in a two-stage election on April 23 and May 7.
Francois Fillon, whose legal woes have snowballed since “Penelopegate” broke in January, once described his wife as a stalwart companion who “has been with me in political life for 30 years ... but always in the shadows.”
Revelations by the satirical and investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine turned a harsh media glare on a woman that no one could recall seeing at work in the halls of parliament.
Though a lawmaker employing a family member is not illegal in France, Penelope is accused of doing little for the €680,000 ($725,000) she received in salary over a number of years.
Fillon, 63, has repeatedly claimed that he is the victim of a “political assassination”.
Last week he accused Socialist President Francois Hollande of using the finance ministry to collect information on politicians, including his former prime minister Manuel Valls, which was then leaked to the press.
Fillon, who overcame intense pressure to quit the presidential race early this month, was once the clear favourite, but opinion polls now show him failing to get past the first round.
If the election were held today, the May 7 runoff would pit far-right leader Marine Le Pen against centrist Emmanuel Macron, polls show.
The 39-year-old Macron is currently tipped to defeat Le Pen, 48, by a wide margin.
Meanwhile, France’s former prime minister Manuel Valls endorsed the presidential bid of centrist Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, the most high-profile Socialist to back the ex-banker over their party’s nominee.
His support for Macron, which had been expected, is another boost for the reformist liberal, who left Valls’s Socialist government last year to form his own political movement, which he says is “neither right nor left.”
The first round of the election is on April 23, with Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen predicted to go through to the second round run-off on May 7.
Asked on French television if he would vote for the 39-year-old former economy minister, Valls said: “Yes, because I think you should not take any risks for the Republic. So, I will vote for Emmanuel Macron.”
Valls’s allusion to “risks for the Republic” was seen as a reference to a possible Le Pen win.
The former prime minister’s decision to opt for Macron was a further blow for the struggling Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon.
Polls currently show Macron easily beating Le Pen in the second round, but after Britain’s shock vote to quit the EU and Donald Trump’s surprise election in the United States there remains significant potential for an upset.
Macron immediately thanked Valls for his support but said it did not mean the ex-premier would secure a top job in his administration if he won, saying he aimed to “renew the faces” in French politics.
