(Updated with judicial source)
PARIS, April 17 (Reuters) – A report by the European Union Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) accuses Marine Le Pen, a far-right candidate in the French presidential election, of embezzling nearly 140,000 euros of public money from the European Parliament between 2004 and 2017 when she was an MEP, reports Mediapart.
According to the investigation site, the report was sent a month earlier to the French justice system, which has been studying it ever since.
“The Paris public prosecutor’s office was actually the recipient of the report (from Olaf) on March 11, 2022. It is being analyzed,” a source from the Paris public prosecutor’s office confirmed to Reuters.
Several relatives of Marine Le Pen, qualified for the second round of the presidential election to be held next Sunday, denounced an “instrumentalization”.
“It is an office against which we have filed a complaint twice, which will obviously give rise to a third complaint”, declared Jordan Bardella, president of the RN, Sunday on Europe 1. “The French will not be fooled by attempts of the European Union and European institutions (..) to interfere in the presidential campaign and harm Marine Le Pen.”
According to Médiapart, the report also pinpoints other personalities from the National Rally, bringing the total amount claimed by the anti-fraud office to more than 617,000 euros. (Gilles Guillaume, edited by)