François Fillon, who was Prime Minister of France, has been given a four-year suspended sentence and his wife a two-year suspended sentence.
The decision was made by the French Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation), which convicted François Fillon of embezzlement and corruption. When François Fillon was Prime Minister, he hired his wife as an “Assistant parlementaire.” The woman was paid a million euros, a job she never held and is the basis of the charges against her.
The court also ordered that Fillon be banned from campaigning for any political office in the country and fined him €375,000, while his wife was given a two-year suspended sentence and a fine equal to that of her husband.
The François Fillon case is known in the French media as “PenelopeGate”.
In 2022, Francois Fillon was sentenced to one year in prison with three suspended terms, but the Court of Cassation (Cour de Cassation) decided to overturn that decision and order a new trial. That decision was made on Tuesday, June 18, 2025, which resulted in the suspension of his entire sentence. Fillon and his wife did not attend the reading of the judgment, where they continued to deny the crimes they were accused of and confirmed that Pinelope was carrying out surveillance and communication activities at the regional level.
Fillon’s sentence has been divided at various times, such as on June 20, 2020, he was sentenced to five years in prison, three of which were suspended. At that time, he appealed the decision and was sentenced to one year in prison, four years suspended. Fillon served as Prime Minister of France from 2007 to 2012, under President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Fillon said that he believes that all this is happening to him is based on the fact that he once ran for President of this country.
