François Fillon’s bid to become the next French president has been hit by damaging new claims that he paid his wife and children for allegedly non-existent jobs.
The Canard Enchainé reported that the conservative candidate’s Welsh-born wife, Penelope, earned €900,000 (£772,000) as his parliamentary assistant and as a contributor to a literary review owned by a friend. That is €300,000 more than the newspaper claimed last week when it broke what has become known as the “Penelopegate” scandal.
It also accused Fillon, the presidential frontrunner, of paying two of his five children an additional €84,000 of public money as “parliamentary assistants”.
On Tuesday, French anti-corruption police took the unusual step of searching offices in the Assemblée National after requesting authorisation from the speaker of the lower house.
Investigators reportedly seized documents from the archives and from Fillon’s parliamentary office. France Inter radio suggested detectives were looking for Mrs Fillon’s employment contracts.
The raids came after police officers questioned the couple separately for five hours on Monday afternoon as part of a preliminary inquiry into alleged fraud and the misappropriation of public funds.
Fillon has been under increasing pressure since the Canard Enchainé revealed a week ago that he had employed his wife but claimed there was no evidence she had done any official work.
After the scandal broke, Fillon insisted in a TV interview that the attack was part of a smear campaign and warned rivals not to target his wife. At a campaign meeting on Sunday, he reiterated the warning to supporters who gave the tearful Mrs Fillon a standing ovation.
Fillon, 62, has insisted his wife’s work had been real and legal and hit out at an “abject accusation”. Penelope Fillon, 60, originally from Llanover, has made no public statement. In 2014, she was elected as a local councillor in Solesmes, western France, where the couple lives in a 14th-century château bought in 1984.
It is not illegal for French politicians to employ spouses or family members, but there is an obligation for them to carry out the job.
In an advance copy of Wednesday’s Canard Enchainé seen by the Guardian, the newspaper claims Fillon’s wife was paid a total of €831,440 as his parliamentary assistant for 15 years, seven years more than the candidate admitted in his televised interview.
The newspaper alleged that as a senator in the upper house between 2005 and 2007, Fillon also paid two of his children a total of €83,735 from public funds. Mrs Fillon was allegedly paid an additional €100,000 to write for the Revue Des Deux Mondes, a literary publication owned by the billionaire Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, a friend of Fillon. The magazine’s offices were searched by police last week after its former director Michel Crépu said Penelope Fillon had written “perhaps two or three” small reviews. Le Canard Enchainé reported police found a contract detailing her job as organising “editorial projects”.
During his TV interview, Fillon admitted employing two of his children who were lawyers for “precise missions”. Le Canard Enchainé claimed Fillon had paid his daughter Marie, 23 at the time and not yet fully sworn in as a lawyer, a total of €57,084 over 15 months. He then employed his son Charles, then studying law, for six months on a salary of €26,651.
Fillon, who served as prime minister for five years under Nicolas Sarkozy and is standing on a conservative and Catholic programme, won the presidential nomination for the opposition Les Républicains after the centre-right held its first ever primary vote in November. It was a surprise victory over the favourite, former prime minister and mayor of Bordeaux Alan Juppé.
During the primaries campaign, Fillon made a great deal of his reputation for probity. He attacked party rival Sarkozy, who is under investigation in several financial scandals.
Fillon has said he will withdraw from the presidential race if judges decide to formally accuse him of wrongdoing. It is unclear where this leaves his party as the primaries runner-up Juppé has ruled out stepping in to replace Fillon.
“François Fillon is not in the position of pulling out. He has explained that he will do so if he is officially put under investigation, but he is not officially under investigation,” Juppé said.
The scandal is likely to boost support for centre-right Fillon’s closest presidential rivals Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, and the independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.
For months, polls have suggested Fillon will be in a second-round presidential runoff with Le Pen.
Le Pen is facing scandals of her own, after the EU ordered her to refund €300,000 paid to European parliament aides – one of them her chief bodyguard – who, it is alleged, were employed on Front National party business. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing, but European officials have threatened to cut her monthly MEP’s salary by half and halt other allowances if she does not pay back the money. The Paris prosecutors office opened a fraud investigation at the European parliament’s request in December.
