French Communist Party presidential candidate Fabien Roussel fought back on Monday after allegations he was paid in public funds for five years for a fictitious job.
Investigative news site Mediapart on Sunday cast doubt on the veracity of Roussel's employment as a parliamentary assistant from 2009 and 2014, saying the Communist former journalist didn't work out of National Assembly lawmaker Jean-Jacques Candelier's constituency office in northern France and citing associates of the deputy who couldn't describe any work Roussel had carried out in the role.
Mediapart said Roussel had not provided any document, e-mail or text message proving he had completed work under Candelier despite repeated requests in the 10 days before the muckraking website published the story on Sunday.
On Monday, the Communist candidate said he had "the documents" that will show he did the work. "I worked for five years with Candelier, with the colleagues I had alongside him. They and Jean-Jacques can bear witness to the work we did together," Roussel told Europe 1 of his stint working for the former National Assembly deputy.
"I was with him, and without him, to keep tabs on the conflict in the Douai area, his area," Roussel responded to the accusations on Monday. "I have the working documents that I put together with him on these topics, with the trade unionists," he continued. "I will show them."
Candelier, for his part, said in a statement he was "surprised and indignant" over the Mediapart allegations, calling Roussel a "precious and efficient associate, on the ground, constantly in touch with a number of union players, elected officials and residents", with "a very astute knowledge of the economic and social situation" and "tight connections with many players in the area".
Roussel is the first French Communist Party nominee to join the race for the French presidency since 2007. The Communist gathered the 500 sponsorships needed from electoral officials across the country well ahead of schedule and applied to join the official presidential ballot over the weekend, he said.
Campaigning on a pledge of "Happy Days for France", Roussel is also one of the very few of a deep glut of left-wing presidential candidates with anything to smile about in the polls ahead of the election's first round on April 10. Indeed, Roussel's party linked the allegations levied by Mediapart to his relative momentum in the race.
French Communist Party spokeswoman Cécile Cukierman noted that "today, the law doesn't define a typical job description, the traceability of parliamentary assistants' work". She added that Roussel's "choice" not to respond to Médiapart's requests "doesn't make him guilty".
"Would we be talking so much about this if he had stayed at 1.5 percent in the polls?" Cukierman asked Agence France Presse. Roussel polled at 5 percent, even with Greens candidate Yannick Jadot and ahead of Socialist Party nominee Anne Hidalgo (3 percent), in a survey released by the Opinionway firm on Friday.
"With only a month and a half to go before the first round, a thing like that comes out, I tell myself 'that's the game'," Roussel told Europe 1 on Monday.
"They made their enquiries by interviewing people who are at war with me. I don't have only friends, that's normal... But I do have dozens of people who could say what we did together, the battles that we even won together with Candelier," Roussel insisted.
The Communist challenged details in the Mediapart story, including his alleged €3,000 salary. "I started at €2,460 net, I finished at €2,700," he said.
Fake jobs was a notorious watchword of the previous French presidential race. The 2017 campaign was rocked by a fake-jobs scandal after revelations published by muckraking weekly Le Canard Enchaîné about conservative candidate François Fillon and his wife, Penelope. Once tipped to win the race, Fillon ultimately fell short of the run-off round, behind the centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Fillon, a former prime minister, was later convicted alongside his wife and handed a five-year sentence. A verdict on Fillon's appeal is due in May.
(With AFP)
