Former French prime minister François Fillon was, on Tuesday, June 17, given a four-year suspended prison sentence over a fake jobs scandal that wrecked his 2017 presidential election bid. Fillon, 71, had, in 2022, been found guilty of embezzlement on appeal, for providing a fake parliamentary assistant job to his wife, Penelope Fillon, that saw her being paid millions of euros in public funds.
On Tuesday, the court ordered him to pay a fine of €375,000 and barred him from running for public 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, without suspension.
Yet France's highest appeals court, the Cour de Cassation, overruled that decision and ordered a new sentencing trial.