French Interior Minister, Bruno Le Roux, resigned on Tuesday hours after prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation into the employment of his daughters as parliamentary aides.
Le Roux said he tendered his resignation to President Francois Hollande, but said that his daughters worked for their pay and their employment was in line with parliamentary rules.
However, he said that he did not want the issue to hamper the government’s work.
“The responsibility demanded by the struggle against terrorism, criminality and to gain control of migratory flows means that we cannot leave ourselves open to any exploitation,” he said.
It is the second scandal surrounding the employment of family members by French politicians in recent months.
Le Roux rejected any comparison with the conservative presidential candidate, Francois Fillon, who is under judicial investigation over allegations that he gave his wife a fake job as a parliamentary assistant.
Earlier, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve’s office had summoned Le Roux over reports that he hired his student-age daughters for summer jobs, while still a member of parliament.
Employment of family members by politicians has become a hot-button issue in the French presidential election after Fillon became embroiled in a scandal over his employing of wife and children as assistants.
Le Roux, who was former head of the Socialist Party group in the lower chamber of parliament, was appointed interior minister in December, 2016 when Cazeneuve left the post to become the prime minister.
The French financial prosecutor’s office, which handles such cases and which opened an inquiry into Fillon’s case, was not immediately available for a comment concerning Le Roux.
Follow Us
”