PARIS (Reuters) – Marine Le Pen is referred to the Paris criminal court in the so-called case of the parliamentary assistants National Front (FN), which has since become National Rally (RN), the Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Friday.
The president of the RN group in the National Assembly and 28 other people are referred to the criminal court for embezzlement of public funds.
In addition to Marine Le Pen, her father, the founder of the FN Jean-Marie Le Pen, the regional councilor of Ile-de-France Wallerand de Saint-Just and the National Rally are among the people concerned by this procedure, said the prosecution. .
A so-called pre-trial hearing is set for March 27, 2024 and the substantive hearing is scheduled for the months of October and November 2024, specifies the Paris prosecutor’s office.
The legal procedure was opened following a report from the European Parliament in 2015 on the situation of several MEPs and parliamentary assistants from the National Front between 2014 and 2016.
Parliament questioned the role of parliamentary assistants who were supposed to work full time for their MEP but who occupied important functions in the FN organizational chart.
A judicial investigation was then opened in December 2016, under the initial qualifications of breach of trust, concealment of breach of trust, organized gang fraud, forgery and use of forgery and concealed work committed between 2010 and 2016.
“Marine Le Pen has not committed any offense or irregularity in the employment of her parliamentary assistants, both with regard to the rules of the European Parliament and French law and constitutional principles,” a spokesperson told Reuters. of the RN.
“The trial to be held will finally be an opportunity for us to defend ourselves on the merits and to put forward these common sense arguments.”
(Report by Elizabeth Pineau and Piotr Lipinski, written by Camille Raynaud, edited by Bertrand Boucey)
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