Cécilia Attias, ex-Sarkozy, pinned by Le Canard enchaîné

PATRICK KOVARIK / AFP

POLITICS – What was Cécilia Attias doing when she was parliamentary assistant to MP Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud? Not much, written The chained Duck.

In its edition of Wednesday, January 13, the weekly at the origin of the Penelope Fillon affair explains that it has not found any trace of the work of the former wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, paid for nine months with the deputy for Hauts-de-Seine between 2002 and March 2003. Elected as an alternate, she had just entered the Assembly thanks to the appointment of Nicolas Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior.

“Not an article, not the slightest report, not a single one of the many books devoted to the former first lady mentions her job as parliamentary attaché to the deputy for Puteaux”, writes Duck, in writings that strongly recall what was mentioned in 2016.

Contacted by RTL, the entourage of Nicolas Sarkozy first spoke of a work of “follow-up of the files of the district”, without denying the existence of this contract. Before telling more to the AFP. “Cécilia Sarkozy’s professional commitment throughout Nicolas Sarkozy’s political life from 1988 until 2007 was well known, as evidenced by the many press articles published on the subject if need be. She was notably very involved in Neuilly-sur-Seine and more generally in the 6th district of Hauts-de-Seine, of which her husband was the deputy ”, it was explained, adding that the former wife of the President of the Republic thus “continued to ensure a follow-up of the files by a half-time contract of parliamentary assistant” when this one became minister.

3000 euros for half time

Still, the weekly also notes that Cécilia Attias was boasting, at the same time, of a job as a “voluntary” advisor to her husband, Place Beauvau, while the contract at the Assembly was for a half-time of 76 hours per month paid 3088 euros net.

What to question, even a little more, its real role in the National Assembly or in constituency, while it did not have an office in either of the two places, always according to Duck.

“The lack of reality of work remains to be demonstrated”, pleads for his part the lawyer of Joëlle Ceccaldi-Raynaud, the deputy with whom Cécilia Attias was employed, adding: “there is no tort in these facts . ”

Four years after the first revelations around the fictitious employment of the wife of François Fillon, it is now the former head of state Nicolas Sarkozy who finds himself splashed by this same kind of suspicion. In the case of Cécilia Attias, the facts are however prescribed, unlike the Pénélope Fillon case at the time.

See also on The HuffPost: Images of Nicolas Sarkozy arriving at his trial for corruption