French Presidential Election Crisis: Party Leaders Consider “Plan B” After Police Search Fillon Office

It is looking increasingly likely, that Francois Fillon who until recently was considered the favorite for the French presidential election in the April/May presidential election, may drop out leaving the frontrunner challenger spot to Marine Le Pen in limbo.
Shortly after news broke that the presidential candidate may have paid out as much as 1 million euros to his wife and children – more than initially alleged – in an ever growing graft scandal, French police searched Francois Fillon’s office in parliament 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 favorite to win the presidency for the conservative Republicans party until a week ago, when it was reported that his wife Penelope had drawn hundreds of thousands of euros in pay from state funds without doing any work.
Fillon on Tuesday declared that he was a victim of a ‘professional’ plot aimed at derailing his bid to become France’s next president. He only failed to mention Vladimir Putin and the farce would have been complete.
‘To my knowledge, in the history of the Fifth Republic, this situation has never occurred’ he during a conference in Paris. ‘Never with less than three months to go before a presidential election has an operation of such magnitude and this professional been staged with the aim of getting rid of a candidate.’

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jan 31, 2017.