FRENCH Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux resigned Tuesday a few hours after prosecutors opened an investigation into a report that he hired his two daughters for a series of temporary parliamentary jobs, starting when they were 15 and 16 years old.

    President Francois Hollande said he had accepted Le Roux’s resignation after a meeting with Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve at the Elysee Palace. He named the country’s low-profile trade and tourism minister, Matthias Fekl, as the new interior minister.

    France’s national financial prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation Tuesday after TMC television reported Monday night that Le Roux employed his daughters as parliamentary assistants for a total salary amount of 55,000 euros (US$59,000) over 24 short contracts.

    The office said the preliminary investigation into the facts disclosed in the TV program is being led by the French police agency charged with fighting corruption and financial and tax wrongdoing.

    While it is legal in France for politicians to hire family members, the TMC report suggests that Le Roux’s daughters did not perform all of the work. During some of their contracts as parliamentary aides, one of the daughters was doing a full-time internship in Belgium while the other was studying in an intensive class.

    Le Roux’s daughters, now 23 and 20, allegedly started working as parliamentary aides for their father over short vacation contracts when they were 15 and 16 and Le Roux was a lawmaker in the French National Assembly.

    “These temporary and official contracts, in accordance with the legal rules of the National Assembly, all corresponded, of course, to work actually carried out,” Le Roux, a member of the Socialist Party, insisted as he announced his resignation from Bobigny, a suburb outside Paris.

    A similar scandal around employing family members has deeply damaged conservative Francois Fillon’s presidential bid. Fillon was handed preliminary charges last week for allegedly using taxpayers’ money to pay family members — his wife and two children — for jobs that may not have existed.

    (SD-Agencies)