Disgraced former French prime minister Francois Fillon and his Abergavenny wife will have to wait until next May to see whether their appeals against corruption charges have been successful.

The scandal surrounding payments to Llanover-raised Penelope Fillon by her husband for allegedly fictitious work - dubbed Penelopegate - led to the right-wing politician’s 2017 presidential bid collapsing and the election of Emmanuel Macron.

Last year, the former French PM was jailed for five years with three suspended, while his wife received a three-year suspended sentence, with both each being fined E375,000 (£328,000).

The couple were convicted of complicity to embezzle and conceal public funds and were also ordered to repay around £1m.

Francois Fillon, 67, was allowed to go free pending an appeal, and solicitor’s daughter Penelope, 66, told the new hearing in Paris: “I don’t recognise myself in this judgment.

“I felt despised and humiliated. I was paralysed. All that I have been able to achieve in the past has been minimised.”

The couple, who have five children, claimed at their appeal hearing that she had undertaken real work as a “field worker” in the constituency of Sarthe where he had been elected deputy.

They both said she maintained the “bond of confidence” with the inhabitants by participating in local demonstrations, by managing the mail or by preparing “memos”.

The judges hearing the appeal say they will deliver their verdict on May 9.

In June 2020, a judge ruled that Mrs Fillon’s job was either “fictitious or greatly overstated”.

“Penelopegate” was one of the biggest political scandals in France in decades, leading to the collapse of conservative candidate Fillon’s presidential campaign amid allegations of a fake jobs scam and the misuse of £1.06m of public cash paid to his wife and family.

Despite their convictions, the couple, who married in her home village of Llanover in 1980, have both consistently denied any wrongdoing, with lawyers calling last year’s trial in Paris a ‘scandal’.

Francois Fillon was French PM under Nicolas Sarkozy - who himself is trying to overturn a jail term after being convicted of election funding fraud - from 2007 to 2012.

Last year’s trial of the Fillons was told the former PM’s wife had been paid to be his parliamentary assistant for 15 years, but had never visited the National Assembly or done the work the payment justified, instead spending most of her time at their Le Mans estate.

The presiding judge said: “The payment was disproportionate to the work done. Mrs Fillon was hired for a position that was without use.”

Mrs Fillon also claimed to be a ‘literary advisor’ to a magazine owned by a billionaire friend of her husband’s which paid her E100,000.

She only wrote a handful of articles, the court heard, and the judge described the payment as an illegal gift.

From 2002-2007, she worked for her husband’s successor as an MP, Marc Joulaud, who was also convicted of paying her for little or no work and received a three-year suspended jail term.

Penelope Fillon attended King Henry VIII School with her four sisters before studying French and German at London University and later law at Bristol University.

She worked as an English teacher at a secondary school in France in the late 1970s, where she met her future husband, and returned to her home town in 2009 when she was a guest of honour at the Abergavenny Food Festival.