François Fillon won a victory on Thursday September 28 in the fictitious jobs affair. The Constitutional Council ruled in favor of the former prime minister, who contested the regularity of his appeal trial due to a procedural point. He had submitted the subject in a priority question of constitutionality (QPC). Without ruling on the merits of the Fillon affair, the Constitutional Council deemed the former prime minister’s appeal admissible, making a new trial possible. The competent courts will have to decide whether the case should be retried.
François Fillon was sentenced in May 2022 by the Paris Court of Appeal to four years in prison, including one year, and a fine of 375,000 euros in the case of his wife’s fictitious jobs. The former prime minister had filed a QPC after appealing to the Court of Cassation in June 2023, considering that recourse to article 385 of the code of criminal procedure during his appeal trial would have hindered his right to benefit from a trial fair.
His lawyer, François-Henri Briard, regretted, during an interview with France Inter, that the article “says that, even if you are aware of an irregularity which tainted the investigation or the investigation, it ‘is too late because you are already sent to court.’ For the lawyer, “it is unconstitutional in the sense that the rights of the defense must be respected throughout the procedure, from the investigation to the execution of the sentence,” he added.
The affair of fictitious jobs was revealed in the middle of the presidential campaign in 2017, when François Fillon was the candidate of the Les Républicains party. Justice had looked into accusations of fictitious employment by his partner, Pénéloppe Fillon, suspected of having been paid as a parliamentary assistant to her husband and the latter’s deputy in Sarthe, during three contracts between 1998 and 2013, for a total remuneration of 612,000 euros net. She was sentenced alongside her husband to two years in prison for “complicity in embezzlement of public funds”, “complicity in misuse of corporate assets” and “concealment” of these two offenses during the appeal trial. from May 2022.
