Paris: French police have searched presidential candidate Francois Fillon's office in parliament on Tuesday as an inquiry into alleged fake work by his wife threatened his campaign and party leaders began to consider a 'Plan B' without him.
Fillon had been favourite to win the presidency for the conservative Republicans party until a week ago, when it was reported that his wife Penelope Fillon had drawn hundreds of thousands of euros in pay from state funds without doing any work.
The allegations of pay for fake work, published in satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, cast doubt on the squeaky-clean image that helped Fillon win his party's primary election over rivals who had faced legal issues in the past.
An urgent official inquiry into whether the hundreds of thousands of euros - close to €1 million ($1.4 million) - his wife received in salary was a misuse of taxpayer's money also highlights a key plank of his campaign - that the state spends too much and half a million public sector jobs should go.
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Fillon has said his Welsh-born wife, with whom he has five children, did real work for her pay as a parliamentary assistant. He said the accusations played into the hands of the far-right. Mrs Fillon has not commented.
An opinion poll published on Sunday showed him losing support, with rival independent centrist Emmanuel Macron having caught up with him. A poll on Tuesday indicated 76 per cent of voters were not convinced of his professed innocence.
With the inquiry gathering pace, party officials began to wonder whether, and how, they might replace him.
"The way things are going, I think we might have to quickly trigger a plan B," said one lawmaker on condition of anonymity.
"Plan B. Lots of people are thinking, reflecting and working on it but no one will speak openly about it," said another influential Republicans member of parliament.
"This will sicken people who are on the minimum wage or not much more," the second lawmaker said. The biggest fear in the party, he said, was that Fillon would be damaged enough to lose the election, but not enough to pull out.
No precedent
Fillon has said he would step down as presidential candidate should he be put under formal investigation, but it is unclear how The Republicans would find a replacement for him.
He was chosen last November in the party's first ever primary contest, so there is no precedent to look to if he quits with less than three months to go until the election.
The scandal has coincided with the Socialist Party's choice of a hard-left figure, Benoit Hamon, as its presidential candidate - a move also seen as helping Macron.
A group of right-leaning Socialist lawmakers wrote in Le Monde newspaper on Tuesday that they could not back Hamon, the clearest sign yet that his appointment could tear the party apart, with some tempted to join the Macron camp.
Meanwhile, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen faced her own battle with authorities over use of public funds.
From midnight, the National Front (FN) leader faces a pay cut of some €7000 a month as punishment from the EU parliament for using money earmarked for a parliamentary assistant to pay one of her own party officials.
Family affair
Le Canard Enchaine's report a week ago said Mrs Fillon - who had previously maintained she did not get involved in her husband's political affairs - had been paid €500,000 from state funds as a parliamentary assistant to Mr Fillon and his successor.
The newspaper said it could find no evidence that she had actually done any work.
In an update on its findings on Tuesday, it said the figure was actually higher, at €831,440. It added that the Fillons' children were also paid - a combined €84,000.
Add to that a €100,000 payment the newspaper said was paid to her for very little work by a literary review owned by family friend Marc Ladreit de Lacharriere, and the figure in the newspaper's sights tops €1 million.
The payments involved were made in the years between 1988 and 2013, the newspaper said.
The Fillons and Mr Ladreit de Lacharriere were all interviewed by the police leading the inquiry on Monday, a day after the full force of the scandal was laid bare in an opinion poll.
Mr Fillon told a European business group on Tuesday that he remained unperturbed by the allegations and was waiting for the investigation to end.
"I'm confident, I'm unfazed," he said, adding that he was the target of a professional slander operation.
Pollster Kantor-Sofres on Sunday put Mr Macron and Mr Fillon almost neck-and-neck, on 20-21 and 21-22 per cent of the vote respectively in the first round on April 23, with Mr Fillon having lost ground compared with a month ago.
Only one of them would go through to the second-round run-off on May 7 against predicted first-round winner Ms Le Pen, seen as getting around 25 per cent, the poll said.
There, either man would win the run-off easily with over 60 per cent of the vote because many French consider Ms Le Pen and her National Front too far to the right to vote for them.
Ms Le Pen is due to detail 140 "presidential commitments" this weekend in Lyon, south-eastern France. She will confirm that she plans to open six months of negotiations to take France out of the euro zone, and to leave the European Union unless it agrees to become a very loose co-operation of nations.
"Our preferred scenario would be to agree jointly on the dismantling of the eurozone," said Jean Messiha, who co-ordinates the drafting of her election platform.
If that did not work, an FN government would seek a unilateral exit from the single currency by putting it to a referendum. Todate polls suggest the French would probably reject a "Frexit".
Reuters; Telegraph, London