PARIS—François Fillon firmly refused on Monday to drop out of the race to be France’s next president despite an investigation into whether well-paid political jobs he gave his wife, son and daughter were genuine and the drop in his status as favorite in the April-May voting.
The man who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2012, the chief workhorse under then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, has long had a reputation as low-key, reliable and standing for moral rectitude, making the corruption scandal particularly shocking to his party, supporters and the French as a whole. On Monday, he scrambled to save his candidacy.
“I have nothing to hide,” Fillon told a news conference aimed at stopping the blood-letting and any conspiring within his conservative party about who might replace him as candidate. “All acts described (in the media) are legal and transparent,” he said.
He apologized for employing his wife, noting that it is not illegal and he is not the only politician to have done it, but acknowledging that the practice was clearly losing favor among the French.
“It was a mistake,” he said.
Prosecutors are trying to determine whether family members actually did the jobs of parliamentary aides that they were paid for. The preliminary probe involves suspicions of embezzlement and misappropriation of public funds.
