Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (RN), arrived on time at the Paris Court that will try her and 26 other people until November 27. They are accused of having diverted funds from the European Parliament intended to pay the salaries of assistants to, in reality, meet party expenses in France. It happened when the formation was still called the National Front and barely had representation in France, and therefore, subsidies. A period in which the far-right party had not begun its demonization process – as they themselves call it – and in which the old Jean-Marie Le Pen, controversial founder of the party, still had a voice in the party. “I face this process with serenity. We have not violated any rules,” proclaimed Marine Le Pen at the entrance to the courts.
On Monday, the parade of the accused before the judge also clearly showed a piece of history of the party that aspires to govern France in 2027. The main problem with this trial, precisely, is that a final conviction, even after the foreseeable resources, could imply the political disqualification of Le Pen and prevent her from running in the presidential elections scheduled in three years. Hence, many believe, the leader of the RN has accelerated in molding her leader and current president of the party, Jordan Bardella. The decision should be known in early 2025.
A room full of journalists awaited Marine Le Pen’s statement. The far-right leader, like the rest of the accused, presented her credentials before the judge and assured that she plans to answer all the questions.
The so-called fictitious jobs scandal was, supposedly, an action directed by the leadership of Le Pen’s French far-right party to use the funds it received from Brussels between 2009 and 2017, a period in which the party had much more presence in Europe ―and, therefore, subsidies― than in France, for functions outside its legal perimeter. Brussels then raised to 6.8 million euros the amount from which the RN benefited through a “fraudulent system of diversion of funds” that, fundamentally, used the money to pay assistants in the European Parliament for domestic matters of the formation. in France.
The defendants are suspected, according to the French magistrates who carried out the investigation since the end of 2016, of having launched “in a concerted and deliberate manner” during that period a “diversion system” of the 21,000 euros per month allocated by the EU. to each MEP to remunerate their parliamentary assistants. The latter would have actually worked all or part of their time for the RN, thus allowing the party considerable savings in salaries.
If the disqualification is issued with a suspended sentence, as happened with the accused of the Democratic Movement – the other French political party that went through a similar process -, it would not be applied unless Le Pen commits another infraction within the period set by the court. The fundamental difference, however, is that in the case of the RN there is abundant documentation that would prove that the diversion was an organized and conscious system, of which the top leaders of the party were aware. Including the old president of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who did not appear in court this Monday.
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The experts who examined the former president and co-founder of the National Front – which in 2018 became the RN – at his home on June 19 were able to confirm “a profound deterioration in his physical and psychological capacities.”
