Paris — French presidential candidate Francois Fillon was back under fire on Wednesday after new media reports were published of his alleged conflicts of interest while a party ally attacked a key part of his radical economic recovery programme. As investigators broadened their inquiry into hundreds of thousands of euros that Fillon paid to his wife Penelope and children, his campaign chief denounced a daily "soap opera" of media leaks that he said was designed to hurt Fillon’s prospects of being elected president in May. "It’s clear that these are orchestrated leaks," Bruno Retailleau, Fillon’s campaign co-ordinator, told RTL radio. "We’re being dragged into a soap opera," he said. Once the frontrunner, the 63-year-old conservative former prime minister has fallen to third place in polls and risks being eliminated in the April 23 first round of the election in favour of a runoff between far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, an independent centrist. Apart from the slea...
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