French minister resigns after lobster dinner scandal!

PARIS: A senior French cabinet minister and close ally of President Emmanuel Macron resigned on Tuesday after reports accused him of extravagant state-funded lobster dinners and misusing public housing in a blow to the centrist government.

Francois de Rugy, who was named environment minister in September 2018, announced his departure after a week of revelations from the left-wing website Mediapart. "The attacks and media lynching targeting my family force me to take the necessary step back," said de Rugy, who was number two in the government after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

Mediapart has published pictures of de Rugy and his journalist wife enjoying lavish champagne-and-lobster dinners and a Valentine’s Day meal while he was speaker of parliament in 2017 and in 2018.

The website alleged the events -- at the expense of taxpayers -- were largely social, while de Rugy contends they were part of his work representing the National Assembly.

Mediapart also revealed that de Rugy had benefited from an apartment near his hometown of Nantes in western France that was rented at a preferential rate intended to be for low-income workers. The 45-year-old was also forced to fire his cabinet director last week after it transpired she had retained an apartment in a social housing bloc in Paris since 2001.