National Front MEPs and parliamentary assistants could find themselves in court. The Paris prosecutor’s office has in fact requested a trial on charges of embezzlement of European public funds between 2004 and 2016. Among the accused are, among others, Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, both MEPs until 2019.
Marine Le Pen has always contested any infringement in this matter. In detail, the prosecution is requesting a trial for eleven people who were elected MEPs on National Front lists, twelve people who were their parliamentary assistants, but also four collaborators of the far-right party. In this long list bringing together the vast majority of party figures from the mid-2010s include the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, the former party number two Bruno Gollnisch, the executive vice-president of Reconquête! Nicolas Bay, the former treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just or the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
“We contest this vision which seems erroneous to us of the work of opposition deputies and their assistants, a work which is above all political,” reacted Marine Le Pen’s entourage. “We will present our arguments before the court on the merits”, it was added, arguing that “bizarrely, this type of decision is taken systematically and opportunely during electoral periods”.
For the National Rally, taken as a legal entity, the prosecution is requesting a trial for complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds, over the entire period covered. The prosecution emphasizes that “the penalties incurred are ten years’ imprisonment and a fine of a maximum of 1 million euros or double the proceeds of the offense”, and recalls that “the legislator has made compulsory the additional penalty of deprivation of the right to stand for election, for a maximum period of five years, or ten years for an elected person or member of the government.”
The investigation began in March 2015, when the European Parliament announced that it had referred possible irregularities committed by the National Front (since renamed RN) to the EU anti-fraud office concerning salaries paid to parliamentary assistants. The investigations were then entrusted at the end of 2016 to two Parisian financial investigating judges.
Marine Le Pen was indicted in June 2017 for breach of trust and complicity, charges later reclassified as embezzlement of public funds. The magistrates suspect the RN of having “concertedly and deliberately” set up a “system of embezzlement” of the envelopes (21,000 euros per month) allocated by the European Union to each deputy to pay parliamentary assistants.
The latter would in reality have worked all or part for the RN, thus allowing it substantial salary savings. The European Parliament, the civil party, assessed its damage in 2018 at €6.8 million for the years 2009 to 2017.