FRANCE’S former prime minister Francois Fillon and his Abergavenny wife have been given jail terms for a fake jobs scam and ordered to pay 1.75m Euros (£1.6m).

As first reported in the Chronicle three years ago, Nicolas Sarkozy’s former PM was accused of using public funds to pay his wife Penelope and children 1.156m Euros (£1.06m) for work they never performed.

At the time, Fillon was standing to be French president, but his bid fizzled out after the scandal dubbed ‘PenelopeGate’ wrecked his chances.

The couple, who married in her home village of Llanover in 1980 and have five children, both denied any wrongdoing.

Their lawyers called the trial in Paris a ‘scandal’ and say they will be appealing.

Francois Fillon, 66, the French PM from 2007 to 2012, was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday, three of them suspended, and fined E375,000 (£328,000).

Penelope Fillon, aged 64, who attended Abergavenny’s King Henry VIII School as a youngster, received a three-year suspended jail term and the same E375,000 fine.

Both were convicted of complicity to embezzle and conceal public funds and must also repay around £1m.

Francois Fillon, who like his wife wore a Coronavirus mask throughout the sentencing, was also banned from seeking an elected office for 10 years. He remains free pending appeal.

The court was told his 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 scandal broke in the French media just three months before the country’s 2017 presidential election, when the conservative politician Fillon was the front-runner in the race.

He never recovered, fading to finish third as Emmanuel Macron went on to win the presidency.

The BBC reported on Monday that the presiding judge said: "The payment was disproportionate to the work done. Mrs Fillon was hired for a position that was without use."

She 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 on Monday of paying her for little or no work and received a three-year suspended jail term.

Penelope Fillon attended King Henry VIII 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 2009 Abergavenny Food Festival.