François Fillon, French Presidential Candidate, Faces Formal Investigation

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/europe/france-francois-fillon-investigation.html

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PARIS — French prosecutors said Friday that they had begun a full-scale investigation into whether a leading presidential candidate, François Fillon, had embezzled public funds.

The announcement advanced what had been a preliminary inquiry into reports that Mr. Fillon had misused public funds to a new stage in which charges could be brought against him. It also threw an already unsettled presidential race further into turmoil.

Mr. Fillon’s legal difficulties increase the possibility — unprecedented in modern French history — that the presidential election this spring could be fought between two candidates from outside the major political parties. One is the far-right leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen; the other is Emmanuel Macron, a centrist and former economy minister who is not affiliated with a party.

Until last month, Mr. Fillon, the candidate of the center-right Republicans party, seemed set to cruise to France’s presidency with little difficulty. A conservative former prime minister, he has campaigned on promises of absolute probity and a program of austerity to curb France’s soaring deficit.

But those planks were overtaken last month when Le Canard Enchaîné, a leading investigative and satirical newspaper, published articles suggesting that Mr. Fillon’s wife, Penelope, had for years been paid out of public funds as her husband’s parliamentary assistant without having done any work. His children were also reported to have been on the payroll. Altogether, hundreds of thousands of dollars are suspected to have been embezzled — sums that staggered the French.

Prosecutors said at the time that they would take a preliminary look at the allegations, and Mr. Fillon’s standing in the polls immediately plunged. The prosecutor’s office said on Friday that it would hand over the case to investigating magistrates, who would look into Mr. Fillon’s suspected “misuse of public funds.”

The investigative judges have the power to summon Mr. Fillon and others for questioning. His lawyers will now have access to the case files and will have more opportunities to file procedural appeals, which could likely delay the filing of formal charges until after the election.

Still, the full investigation is expected to further damage Mr. Fillon’s appeal among the conservative, often middle-class voters who had supported his victory in the primary. His decline in popularity in rural areas where his focus on integrity was his strongest appeal has been amply documented in the French news media.

Mr. Fillon has angrily denied wrongdoing in speeches, news conferences and television appearances, and he has largely blamed the news media for his problems. His combative stance and his vow to stay in the race — and the lack of an alternative for center-right voters — have enabled him to rally his core supporters and to partly claw his way back in the polls.

By Friday, he had regained second place in many surveys, behind Ms. Le Pen and ahead Mr. Macron.

Under the French system, if no presidential candidate wins a majority of votes, the top two candidates move on to a second round. Ms. Le Pen is expected to win the first round, but the polling until now has suggested that either Mr. Fillon or Mr. Macron would defeat her in round two.

Many conservative voters are thought to be skeptical of Mr. Macron’s service in the Socialist government, his youth (he is 39) and his inexperience.

A series of recent gaffes caused an uproar on the right. On a visit to Algeria, Mr. Macron declared France’s colonization of the country a “crime against humanity” — a red flag in France, where memories of the bloody war over Algerian independence are not so distant.

The comment cost Mr. Macron in the polls, helping both Mr. Fillon and Ms. Le Pen, who faces an inquiry of her own over the possible abuse of public funds.