THE former French Prime Minister jailed for corruption over a 'fake jobs' scandal involving his Abergavenny-raised wife has succeeded in an appeal to get the prison time suspended.

The 'PenelopeGate' scandal – named after his wife and first revealed by a French newspaper – was fatal to François Fillon's 2017 Presidential campaign, ultimately won by President Macron.

He was subsequently convicted of paying over a million euros in public funds to his wife in 2012-2013, who the court found did no work as a parliamentary assistant.

The Paris Court of Appeal has now suspended all of Fillon's original four-year jail term, although the Conservative politician is still barred from seeking public office for five years and must pay a fine of €375,000.

The sentence of Penelope Fillon, who grew up in Llanover, was unchanged – a two-year suspended sentence and the same fine as her husband.

Both have claimed she was genuinely employed and did constituency work.

She told a previous 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.”

Francois Fillon was French PM under Nicolas Sarkozy, who himself has been convicted of corruption and bribery, from 2007 to 2012.

The former French PM, 71, has previously claimed: "The treatment I received was somewhat unusual and nobody will convince me otherwise. Perhaps there was a link with me being a candidate in the presidential election."

Former King Henry VIII School student Penelope Clarke met her husband in France in the 1970s while doing a modern languages degree at University College London.

They married in 1980 at the 17th-century St Bartholomew's Church in Llanover, and went on to have five children.

Mrs Fillon returned to her home town in 2009 when she was a guest of honour at the Abergavenny Food Festival.