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| French election: Francois Fillon faces charges | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| French centre-right presidential candidate Francois Fillon has said he will fight on, as he announced that a judge was placing him under formal investigation. | |
| For weeks, he has fought allegations that his wife was paid for years for work she did not do. | |
| He has now been summoned to appear before the judge, Serge Tournaire, on 15 March. | |
| "It's a political assassination," Mr Fillon complained. | |
| "But it's not just me that is being assassinated, it's the presidential election. The voices of millions of votes have been muzzled." | |
| Mr Fillon said he would respect the summons and tell the judge the truth. | |
| In a combative speech, the Republican candidate vowed not to give in but to fight to the end, urging voters to follow him. | |
| Who is Francois Fillon? | |
| A former prime minister during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, he was selected late last year in national primaries held by the centre-right Republicans that attracted some four million voters. | |
| For a time he was the favourite in the race to succeed Francois Hollande as president, but then came the "fake jobs" allegations in satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine. | |
| He has slipped to third in the polls, behind far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron. | |
| His appearances have recently been accompanied by loud protests and he has accused the government of allowing the campaign to turn into "a climate of quasi civil war". | |
| What has he done wrong? | |
| The allegations circling around the Fillon family focus mainly on his Welsh-born wife Penelope. | |
| Le Canard Enchaine alleged she was paid €831,400 (£710,000; $900,000) over several years for working as a parliamentary assistant but reportedly had no parliamentary pass. She was also alleged to have picked up €100,000 for writing a handful of articles for a literary journal. | |
| The family has consistently denied the claims. Initially Mr Fillon said he would stand down as a candidate if his case was placed under formal investigation, but recently he insisted that he would fight on "until victory". | |
| "The closer we get to the date of the presidential election, the more scandalous it would be to deprive the right and centre of a candidate," he said. |