Nine former MEPs from the National Front (renamed RN) will appear, including Marine Le Pen, Louis Aliot, now vice-president of the RN, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, and the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
Alongside them, 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants and four party collaborators will also be tried in this trial scheduled for three half-days a week until November 27.
Marine Le Pen facing the judges
The leader of the RN said that she intended to surrender as much as possible in front of the judgesbut this Tuesday, October 1, it could favor the general policy declaration of the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier to the National Assembly.
These include the historic bodyguard of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, Thierry Légier, his secretary, Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff, Catherine Griset, and even the party’s graphic designer…
“Marine, would it be possible for me to come to Strasbourg tomorrow to see how a session is going” in Parliament, “and to meet Mylène Troszczynski to whom I report? »wrote Julien Odoul in February 2015, four months after the start of his contract as a parliamentary assistant to Ms. Troszczynski. ” Yes of course “replied Marine Le Pen.
Up to 10 years in prison, a fine of 1 million euros and a 10-year ineligibility sentence
The defendants, judged in particular for embezzlement of public funds or complicity in this offense, face a maximum of ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros and above all a penalty of ineligibility of ten years likely to hamper Marine Le Pen’s presidential ambitions for 2027.
“But there is no reason for her to be declared ineligible since François Bayrou, prosecuted for the same facts, also president of a political party, was acquitted. So what works for one should work for the other.wants to believe Sébastien Chenu.
Most of the defendants contest en bloc, citing a “pooling of the work of parliamentary assistants. The RN has been denouncing for years a “relentlessness”, or even a procedure ” policy “.
“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for”
“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for in this matter,” declared in Le Parisien mid-September Marine Le Pen, 56 years old, saying he wanted to explain at the bar that parliamentary assistants are not “not employees of the European Parliament” and “obviously have a vocation, for a certain number of them, to engage in politics”.
“It is not a political trial because judges do not play politics, but it is a political settling of scores by the majority of the European Parliament”agrees with AFP Me Alexandre Varaut, lawyer and RN MEP.
The European Parliament, civil party, estimated its financial damage at three million euros. He will only claim two million, one million having already been reimbursed (which is not an admission of guilt, assured the RN).
No Jean-Marie Le Pen at trial
The Paris prosecutor’s office mentioned in September 2023 “a real system put in place to have the European Parliament bear part of the operating costs of the FN by covering the salaries of a growing number of its employees”.
This “system”, validated by Jean-Marie Le Pen and then his daughter, according to the prosecution, would have accelerated with the entry into Parliament in 2014 of 23 FN MEPs (compared to three previously).
Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96 years old, will not appear, an expertise having determined that he was not “in condition” to be judged for health reasons, like former MEP Jean-François Jalkh.
