French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and his wife Penelope | Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images François Fillon paid wife €500,000 from MP funds: report French paper says Penelope Fillon was paid from money meant for aides.

François Fillon, the conservative candidate to be French president, paid his wife €500,000 from parliamentary funds, according to a media report Tuesday.

The weekly Le Canard Enchaîné said British-born Penelope Fillon was paid from money available to her husband as an MP for the central Sarthe region over a 10-year period.

Hiring family members is not against French parliamentary rules, but the weekly said it had been unable to track down witnesses that she actually did any work, and Fillon told a television interviewer in November that his wife stayed at home while he worked as a lawmaker.

Fillon's wife had worked for him, said his spokesman Thierry Solere. "It is common for the spouses of MPs to work with them," he told AFP.

Le Canard Enchaîné said pay slips showed that Penelope Fillon was paid from 1992 to 2002 from funds intended for parliamentary assistants.

It said that from 2002, when Fillon joined Jacques Chirac's cabinet, she became an assistant to Marc Joulaud, who carried out Fillon's parliamentary duties in his place, earning between €6,900-€7,900 a month.

The paper said that Penelope was also paid "for at least six months" in 2012 when Fillon, a former prime minister, left government after the fall of Nicolas Sarkozy's government.

"In total, Penelope will have earned around €500,000 from parliamentary funds," the weekly wrote.

Opinion polls have Fillon facing off against the far-right's Marine Le Pen in the final round of the presidential election in May.