MONTREAL (CP) - Gilbert Chartrand, a former Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MP, and his wife were sentenced Wednesday to 18 months in jail on fraud charges for bilking their former employer of $750,000.
But Chartrand, 50, and Carole Lambert, 56, were freed also immediately after their lawyer filed an appeal of the sentence. Alexandre Bergevin is also appealing last April's guilty verdict.

Chartrand and Lambert were convicted of defrauding businessman Seymour Jacobson in 1996 by diverting money into their personal accounts and buying real estate in their own names while managing his Canadian property holdings.

Court previously heard that the couple used $470,000 of the misappropriated money in 1996 to buy a triplex, which could fetch between $700,000 and $900,000 today.

The pair's total property holdings are worth $1.7 million, including a condo and a chalet in the Laurentians, north of Montreal.

Chartrand was elected with former prime minister Brian Mulroney's Conservatives in the 1980s and was a founding member of the Bloc Quebecois in 1990.