Marine Le Pen, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, as well as twenty-five other members of the National Rally (RN) will be judged from September 30 to November 27 by the Paris criminal court, the latter announced on Wednesday March 27. A hard blow for the far-right party a few weeks before the European elections.

The magistrates suspect the representatives of the RN of having “in a concerted and deliberate manner” set up, between 2004 and 2016, a “system of embezzlement” of the envelopes (21,000 euros monthly) allocated by the European Union (EU) to each MP to pay parliamentary assistants. The latter would have actually worked entirely or partially for the RN, allowing it substantial salary savings.

Marine Le Pen, who has always contested these accusations, will be tried for embezzlement of public funds and complicity.

The court will decide on July 3, after expert opinion, whether Jean-Marie Le Pen, 95, is able to prepare his defense and attend the trial. “Mr Le Pen can no longer move around and his faculties are considerably impaired,” his lawyer, François Wagner, told the court. The founder of the National Front (FN) – renamed RN in 2018 – is, like his daughter, being prosecuted for embezzlement of public funds and complicity. If experts believe that Mr Le Pen is unable to appear, he should be represented by his daughter Marie-Caroline Le Pen.

Breach of trust

Among the other defendants are the mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, the vice-president of Reconquête!, Nicolas Bay, the ex-treasurer of the FN Wallerand de Saint-Just and the deputy and spokesperson for the RN, Julien Odoul.

In total, eleven people were elected MEPs on FN lists, twelve others were their parliamentary assistants, as well as four party collaborators who must be judged.

The affair broke out in 2015, following an anonymous report made to the services of the European Parliament. They quickly note that twenty of the eighty employees mentioned in the National Front’s organizational chart also occupy the position of parliamentary assistant to a party MEP. The European Parliament referred the matter to the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and the French justice system, which opened a preliminary investigation on December 15, 2016.

Marine Le Pen was indicted in June 2017 for “breach of trust” and “complicity,” charges later reclassified as “embezzlement of public funds.”

The European Parliament, the civil party, estimated its damage in 2018 at €6.8 million for the years 2009 to 2017.