Name: French ex-PM found guilty over wife's 'fake job' - BBC News
Uploaded: 2020-07-02T17:41:41.000Z
Duration: 2 min 59 s
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and a French court has found the former prime minister, Francois Fionn, guilty of fraud and embezzlement.

It is a very, very severe sentence, which you will appeal, I hasten to add.

I mean, he's not gonna be walked off to jail today, but he did get a five year jail term through them suspended.

So two year he faces two years in jail and his wife, Penelope, British born Penelope Fiore, has a two year suspended sentence as well.

So you know it's a damning verdict, and it's judgment.

The court made some statements which were very, very severe towards the couple.

Former front runner to win the presidency in the at the last election, who the court said had put private gain over public good and had failed, obviously and clearly in his duty to probity and eggs and clarity is as a public official by giving his wife this fake job, and that was the bait basis off the charge against him.

Better for all these years he'd employed her as his assistant on drawn hundreds of thousands of euros, pounds dollars or public funds to do that.

But that in fact, she done nothing on the case, hinged on the island of whether or not she'd actually done a job on the court, decided that she hadn't and this money and therefore being misappropriated you, as you say, a front runner in the presidential race and a really celebrated career.

Well, yes, I mean, hey, he was a stalwart of the French Centre, right?

Going back 20 years have been a very, very young parliamentarian in the early nineties, served under Shear except as Prime Minister under Under Sarkozy on then on on then was the front runner 2017 to be the to be the next president if we cast our minds back to them.

Just four years ago, it was looking very much as if the centre right would win after horse warlord and who was going to lead center right when it turned that Francois Fiore was he won the primaries and right up to January February off 2017 it looked like he was being written up as the man who is gonna be in front of next president on then.

This dramatic, spectacular collapse caused by the revelations in A in a newspaper and and that that is very Jermaine to all of this because, of course, part of the defense, what his lawyers I have been arguing and will continue arguing appeal is that there is much more to this than meets the eye on that.

In addition to the arguments about whether or not he's guilty off what he's accused ing, that should be another argument about how this came into the public eye and the speed with which the probably the prosecutor's office reacted to it in a way that they say was unwanted and showed that it was being directed from above in some way.

 Hugh, thanks very much for that update there from Paris. 