THE HOME OF French right-wing presidential candidate Francois Fillon has been raided by police.
The raid comes just one day after Fillon confirmed that he is facing charges over a ‘fake jobs’ scandal involving his wife.
Police entered the property in a wealthy area of Paris this morning searching for information as part of that probe. They have not commented on the nature of the raid.
62-year-old Fillon was favourite at the start of the year to win the French presidency after clinching the nomination for the Republicans party last November.
However, he has since been hit by a series of allegations that he paid his wife Penelope and his children hundreds of thousands of euro over decades for allegedly fake parliamentary jobs.
Fillon said the charges were “entirely calculated to stop me being a candidate for the presidential election”.
He has chosen to continue his presidential campaign despite the charges facing him, a move which fellow former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, in an article for Italy’s Le Figaro, warned was dragging his faction into an “abyss”.
However, Fillon is not the only candidate who has had a difficult Thursday – earlier today the European Parliament lifted far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s immunity from prosecution over her tweeting of images of Islamic State atrocities.
The move paves the way for France to pursue a case against the far right National Front leader, after prosecutors launched a probe in 2015 over the graphic pictures, which included the decapitated body of US journalist James Foley.
With © – AFP, 2017
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