Francois Fillon’s French presidential campaign plunged deeper into trouble on Tuesday after further revelations about his use of public funds to employ members of his family.

The Republican candidate’s daughter and son allegedly earned 84,000 euros ($91,000) from 2005 to 2007 while working for him when he was a Senator, Le Canard Enchaine said. His wife, Penelope Fillon, earned more than 900,000 euros during over a decade as a parliamentary assistant and a contributor to a magazine, according to Le Canard.

The newspaper’s initial report on Penelope’s job last week triggered a prosecutor to open a preliminary probe into the family’s affairs. The candidate says he’s innocent.

“I am confident, I am calm and I’m waiting for the end of the investigation,” Fillon said in Paris. “Never has a situation like this one occurred. Never, three months before an election, was such an big and professional operation set up to eliminate a candidate other than through a democratic vote. Everyone will reap the consequences.”

The scandal has gripped France over the last week and offers the prospect of another twist in a race that has the nationalist Marine Le Pen leading the polls and has already seen household names like President Francois Hollande and his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, fall by the wayside. That said, polls show that Le Pen is still a long shot for victory in the second round of voting, with Emmanuel Macron also poised to benefit -- at least in the short term -- from Fillon’s woes.

“His image has been seriously damaged, and what’s worrying for him is that even among his supporters many are not convinced,” said Yves-Marie Cann, director of political studies at pollster Elabe in Paris. “The fire is not contained.”

David Fuller's view

We have known for a long time that 2017 was going to be an important year in terms or EU elections.  Well, we are only one month into the year but it would be premature to describe it as a non-event.  This would be a scandal in the UK but my impression is that the French may only shrug their shoulders. 

Interestingly, Marine Le Pen continues to lead the polls while everyone who claims to be knowledgeable about French elections says she has no chance.  After all, the French have never been shy about doing what they want in the EU, where they are the junior partner to Germany. 

That may sound like groupthink but why take the risk of voting for someone who actually wants to leave the EU?  Well, the French economy has experienced a depressingly large amount of terrorism over the last year or so.  The crippling strikes continue; it is so much harder to run a business in France with all the French/EU regulation, and the brain drain continues. 

London is described as the fourth or fifth largest ‘French City’, and millions of classy, well-educated and commercially successful French families are thriving over here.  They spend their holidays in France, understandably, but I see no evidence that they are thinking of leaving because of the Brexit vote.