Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Former French prime minister François Fillon was on Tuesday given a four-year suspended prison sentence over a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 presidential bid. Fillon, 71, had been found guilty in 2022 of embezzlement on appeal for providing a fake parliamentary assistant job to his wife, Penelope Fillon, that saw her being paid from public funds although the court found that she never did any work in the National Assembly. The Paris appeals court also ordered him to pay a fine of €375,000 and barred him from seeking elected office for five years. The sentence was milder than the one handed down in 2022, when he had been ordered to spend one year behind bars.” (06/17/25)