French presidential candidate's wife charged in fake job scandal

The New York Times 00:16 - 29 March 2017

Penelope Fillon, the wife of French presidential election candidate for the right-wing Les Republicains (LR) party, walks towards her apartment building on March 28, 2017 in Paris

Penelope Fillon, wife of Frances conservative presidential candidate Francois Fillon, was charged Tuesday with complicity in the abuse of public funds in a scandal that has engulfed her husbands campaign, a judicial source said.

Francois Fillon has already been charged in the case involving allegedly fictitious jobs as a parliamentary aide for which his Welsh-born wife Penelope was paid hundreds of thousands of euros.

The charges in the scandal dubbed "Penelopegate" also relate to a job she had at a literary magazine owned by a billionaire friend of the couple for which she allegedly did little or no actual work.

The new blow to the campaign comes less than four weeks before French voters go to the polls in a two-stage election on April 23 and May 7.