“Rude montage”, “stinky ball”, even attempted interference by the EU: the Le Pen camp protested on Sunday against accusations of embezzlement of European public money targeting their candidate, seven days before the second round of the presidential one. Marine Le Pen and her relatives are accused by the European anti-fraud office of having embezzled around 600,000 euros of European public money during their mandates as MEPs, according to a new report submitted in March to French justice and revealed Saturday by Mediapart.
“Each time she is a candidate, we take out a stink ball”
“It is an office against which we have filed a complaint twice” and there will “obviously be a third complaint”, RN President Jordan Bardella told Cnews / Europe 1 / Les Echos on Sunday. “The French will not be fooled by attempts by the European Union and European institutions” to “interfere in the presidential campaign and harm Marine Le Pen”, he said. “The country where the power tries to (note: criminalize) the opponents by crude montages is called a dictatorship”, also reacted on Twitter Philippe Olivier, special adviser to the far-right candidate.
“Each time she is a candidate, a stink ball is taken out of her, a few days before the election. This generally comes from elsewhere in the European Union, in one way or another”, noted on RMC Laurent Jacobelli, spokesperson for Marine Le Pen. “Twisted blow, lies, verbal abuse … I think the Macron team is so feverish that it is ready for anything. The European Union is coming to the aid of its little soldier”, according to him.
Three relatives of Marine Le Pen also targeted
The Olaf report, of which Mediapart publishes extracts, concerns the fees that political groups can use and that Marine Le Pen and her relatives would have used for national political purposes, for personal expenses or for benefits for the benefit of commercial companies close to his party, the National Rally and the far-right parliamentary group Europe des nations et des libertés (ENL).
Olaf implicates Marine Le Pen, three other former MEPs – her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, her former companion Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch, member of the national office of the RN -, and the ENL. According to the report, the candidate would have personally embezzled around 137,000 euros of public money from the Strasbourg Parliament between 2004 and 2017.
Since June 2017, Marine Le Pen has also been prosecuted in the investigation carried out in Paris on suspicion of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament of party assistants. She is indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” and “complicity” in this crime.