The investigation was opened in 2015 following a complaint from the then president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz who had discovered a huge fraud against the Strasbourg Parliament. Between 2004 and 2016, the leaders of the Front National first and then the Rassemblement National would have used European funds to hire and pay assistants who actually worked for the party in Paris on dossiers not linked to Strasbourg or Brussels.
Last Wednesday the Prosecutor’s Office asked five years in prisonof which two with suspended sentences, a fine of 300 thousand euros and ineligibility for five years against Marine Le Pen and the other 24 defendants, party leaders, former deputies and former parliamentary assistants. The sentence will arrive at the beginning of 2025 and if it were to confirm the period of ineligibility Le Pen would not be able to run for the Elysée for the fourth time: the prosecutors have in fact asked that the sentence, even if only of first degree, have a “provisional execution ” pending any appeal that the defendant’s lawyers may present.
The RN leader is accused of having participated in a real “structured and centralized system”, carried out by “subsequent party leaders”, at the time submerged in debt. In addition to her, Louis Aliot, current vice-president of the RN as well as a “historic” figure of the far-right party and former companion of Marine Le Pen, the former number two of the FN Bruno Gollnisch and Le Pen’s niece, Marion, will also appear in court. Maréchal.
Instead, he will escape trial Jean-Marie Le Penthe elderly founder of the Front National who was a parliamentarian in Strasbourg between 1984 and 2003 and then again between 2004 and 2019. At 96, he will not appear in court due to his very precarious state of health. The dolphin Jordan Bardellawho took the reins of the far-right party in 2021 and who was also an assistant to an RN MEP for a few months in 2015, is not among the defendants.
From the beginning of the process, Marine Le Pen has always declared herself innocenteven if the evidence against her would be overwhelming. According to a journalistic investigation by the newspaper Libération, investigators are in possession of several emails and text messages which prove that some Party figures were paid as parliamentary assistants but worked only for the party, which is prohibited by European regulations. This is the case, for example, of the Le Pen family bodyguard, Thierry Légier, who was allegedly paid with EU funds despite appearing only in the party’s organizational chart. The same goes for Catherine Griset, now an MEP, who was paid as an assistant in the EU Parliament from 2010 to 2016, while she was personal assistant and then cabinet director of Marine Le Pen. In both cases, neither of them would ever set foot in the European Parliament.
Marine Le Pen’s reaction is harsh, seeing the request for ineligibility as an intention to stop her political rise: “The only thing the prosecution was interested in was Marine Le Pen, to be able to ask for her exclusion from political life (… ) and then by the Rassemblement National, in order to ruin the party.”
The response is also dry Jordan Bardella who on X comments: “The prosecution does not seek justice, but revenge against Marine Le Pen. His scandalous requisitions aim to deprive millions of French people of their vote in 2027. It is an attack on democracy.”
Closeness also expressed by the leader of the League, Matthew Salviniwho also writes on X “Five years in prison and ineligibility required for Marine Le Pen. Even in France they are trying in every way to stop the popular will and the democratic wind of change. On behalf of myself and the entire League, I send all our support to my friend and ally Marine. Don’t give up!”.
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