French presidential candidate Fillon accused of nepotism

This is a 25 January 2016 French video on the Pénélope Fillon nepotism scandal.

After bad news for French Blairite presidential candidate Manuel Valls, today bad news for center (???) right presidential candidate Fillon.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

Presidential candidate Fillon under fire for his wife’s ‘fake jobs’

Today, 11:40

A solid revelation of the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné about the wife of presidential candidate François Fillon. She was for many years the parliamentary assistant of her husband and was paid liberally for that. But staff say they have never seen Pénélope Fillon in parliament.

The revelation is taken very seriously, says correspondent Frank Renout. “The French press does not stop talking about it this morning.”

From the late 1990s on Fillon’s wife was his assistant for eight years. She made more than half a million euros with that. In peak months her fee even rose to 7,900 euros per month. But she never came.

The same happened in another job she had in a magazine of which a friend of Fillon was the owner. There she made 5,000 euros per month. The director of that magazine says Pénélope Fillon sporadically wrote something, but he never saw her in the newsroom. …

According to Frank Renout it is now up to Fillon. “He must prove this is not true, remove the unrest. He poses in his campaign as “Mr. Values” and then you can not have something like this.”

Fillon’s enemies hope family affair will end presidential bid: here.

This allegation is particularly damaging since Fillon staked his presidential bid on claims that he was not as corrupt as his main LR rivals. Former Prime Minister Alain Juppé was convicted on corruption charges in 2004, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy still is in legal jeopardy in a series of cases arising from his term in office from 2007 to 2012: here.