Two financial investigating judges on Friday ordered the referral to the Paris criminal court of Marine Le Pen, the National Rally and 26 other people suspected of having participated in a system of embezzlement of European public funds between 2004 and 2016, a indicated the Paris prosecutor’s office, confirming information from Franceinfo.
A first hearing on the organization of the trial for embezzlement of public funds and complicity is scheduled for March 27, 2024 before the debates on the merits which will take place in October and November 2024, said the prosecution. “This decision is unfortunately not a surprise,” reacted in a press release Me Rodolphe Bosselut, lawyer for the president of the RN group in the National Assembly.
Marine Le Pen tried for embezzlement of public funds and complicity
Marine Le Pen, who has always contested any offense in this case, will be tried for embezzlement of public funds and complicity. His father, co-founder in 1972 of the flame party, will also be on the dock alongside the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, the executive vice-president of Reconquête! Nicolas Bay, and the former treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just or the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
In total, 11 people were elected MEPs on National Front lists (since renamed RN), 12 others were their parliamentary assistants, as well as four collaborators from the far-right party who will be judged four months after the European elections.
Damage of 6.8 million euros according to the European Parliament
The National Rally, as a legal entity, will have to answer for complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds, over the entire period covered. The decision of the financial magistrates is in accordance with the requisitions of the Paris prosecutor’s office in September. 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” put in place 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 totally or partly for the RN, thus allowing it substantial salary savings. The European Parliament, a civil party, assessed its damage in 2018 at 6.8 million euros for the years 2009 to 2017. The parallel trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the UDF and the MoDem has just ended in Paris , with a deliberation scheduled for February 5. Me Bosselut denounced an “unequal treatment (which) calls into question the impartiality of the prosecutions”, stressing that in the case of the centrists, the parliamentary assistants were not the subject of prosecutions.