Paris (AFP)

Three years after the explosion of the case which had pulverized the presidential campaign of François Fillon, here is the time of the trial: the ex-Prime Minister, his wife Penelope and his former deputy are expected Monday at the Paris court to answer the suspicion of fictitious employment of Mrs. Fillon.

The three defendants, who are scheduled to appear until March 11, face ten years in prison, heavy fines and ineligibility. Their lawyers will plead for release.

The trial promises to be as resounding as was the fall of the candidate of the right, cantor of integrity to which the Elysée seemed promised, finally eliminated on the evening of the first round.

He could, however, experience a false start, due to a request for the dismissal of this only first day made by the defense in support of the lawyers' strike against the reform of their autonomous pension plan.

The 32nd Correctional Chamber, chaired by Nathalie Gavarino, will examine this request at the opening of the hearing, at 1.30 p.m. If accepted, debates will begin later in the week.

François Fillon, 65, left politics on his bitter failure on April 23, 2017. Converted into finance, he assures that "the proofs" of the reality of his wife's work "will be provided during the trial".

Justice had seized the same day of the first revelations of a long series, January 25, 2017 in the Duck chained.

The examining magistrates, who have been investigating for more than two years, have become convinced that Penelope Fillon, 64, had benefited from "fictitious" jobs as parliamentary assistant to her deputy husband and her deputy in Sarthe Marc Joulaud.

Part of the charges of embezzlement, concealment or concealment, which date back to 1981, are time-barred. In the 1998-2013 period alone, more than one million euros of public money was "embezzled", believe the investigators.

The Fillon are also prosecuted for concealment and complicity in the misuse of corporate assets, for the employment of "literary advisor" obtained by Ms. Fillon in the Revue des deux mondes by Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, friend of François Fillon, paid 135,000 euros between 2012 and 2013.

A job "of pure convenience, without real consideration" according to the prosecution, for which the billionaire was sentenced for misuse of corporate property at the end of a separate procedure "plead guilty".

- "First collaborator" -

Since the beginning of the affair, François Fillon has constantly defended the work of his discreet wife, his "first and most important collaborator" in Sarthe, denouncing an investigation "against".

The practice of family jobs, prohibited in the wake of the "Penelopegate", was then legal and widespread. But the investigators launched on the track of the jobs of Mrs. Fillon hardly found testimonies or archives showing that she had really worked.

Nor were they convinced by the numerous documents tendered by the defense in order to attest to the work accomplished: documents "intended to make mass", which "demonstrate nothing", they estimated.

For them, Penelope Fillon's activities with her deputy husband did not go beyond the "social role played in a fairly traditional way by the spouses of politicians". And Ms. Fillon's work with Marc Joulaud between 2002 and 2007 had "even less consistency".

The defense, for its part, considers that many of the witnesses questioned are not relevant and that the documents provided were too quickly "scanned".

The lawyers of the couple Fillon and Marc Joulaud, 52 years old and candidate for his re-election as mayor of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, should in particular insist on the specifics of the work of parliamentary assistant, which can recover very different realities from a deputy to another.

The Fillon spouses are also accused of "jobs of convenience" granted to two of their children when François Fillon was a senator, and Mr. Fillon the non-declaration of a loan from Mr. Lacharrière.

The only civil party to the lawsuit, the National Assembly requests "the reimbursement of the sums paid as remuneration, if the court ever considers that the employment is fictitious", according to his lawyer Yves Claisse. Or, if applicable, more than one million euros in damages.

© 2020 AFP