PARIS--Right-wing presidential candidate Francois Fillon, hit by new damaging disclosures, accused the Socialist government on Wednesday of organising a campaign of media leaks about his financial affairs to neutralise him as a force in the election.
Still unable to reverse dismal approval ratings ahead of the first round of voting on April 23, Fillon went on the offensive to denounce weekly "organised leaks" which he said violated the confidentiality of the judicial investigation of his affairs. "Who are organising these? State services ...," he told franceinfo radio.
"And, oddly enough, the Socialist party, Mr. Macron and Mr. Hollande pounce on these pseudo-revelations," he said, referring to election frontrunner Emmanuel Macron and Socialist President Francois Hollande.
The 63-year-old former prime minister was the leader in the race for the Elysee and seemed comfortably on course late last year to recover power for the centre-right The Republicans party after five years of Socialist rule. That was until media reports in late January sent his ratings tumbling by disclosing he had paid his wife Penelope and two children hundreds of thousands of euros of public funds for work they may not have carried out.
He is now under formal investigation for misappropriation of public funds and a source close to the inquiry said on Tuesday that the investigation was being broadened to include suspicion that false documents had been presented to justify the employment of his family members.
A lawyer for Fillon's British-born wife denied this allegation. "Since Penelope Fillon's past activities on behalf of her husband were real, all the documents pertaining to this work are also unquestionably genuine," lawyer Pierre Cornut-Gentille said in a statement.
Additionally, Le Canard enchaine - the newspaper that first disclosed the "Penelope-gate" scandal - reported on Wednesday that a Lebanese billionaire paid a company owned by Fillon $50,000 in 2015 to arrange introductions to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne. This was dismissed by the Kremlin as 'fake news'.
"The truth is that the Left is incapable of winning this election and would only have a chance of succeeding if there was no adversary from the Right. That will not happen," Fillon told francinfo radio.
