France charges billionaire over Fillon scandal
French media have reported that a fake jobs scandal that embroiled defeated rightwing presidential candidate Francois Fillon in January has claimed a new victim, a billionaire who reportedly employed the scandal-ridden wife of the Republican politician.
The Journal du Dimanche newspaper said on Sunday that Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere, a businessman and a close friend of Fillon, employed Fillon's wife Penelope at his magazine La Revue des Deux Mondes from May 2012 to December 2013 with a pre-tax monthly salary of 5,000 euros (USD 5,500) a month.
Three investigating judges had reportedly summoned Ladreit de Lacharriere late on Friday and charged him with misuse of corporate assets.
Fillon suffered a major blow to his aspirations to win the April-May presidential election when the newspaper Le Canard Enchaine reported in January that Penelope had received salaries worth hundreds of thousands of euros in 15 years for a parliamentary job that she did not really perform. Fillon insisted that the reports and the following investigation were politically motivated.
The former prime minister also failed to report to a transparency watchdog an interest-free loan of 50,000 euros which he took from Ladreit de Lacharriere.
Fillon, a major favorite until the publication of the reports about her British-born wife, lost the campaign to centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine le Pen with 20.01 percent of the votes in the first round of elections on April 23. Macron, who won the run-off on May 7, was inaugurated as France's youngest ever president on Sunday.
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