“We did not violate any rules”: Marine Le Pen expressed her “serenity” on Monday at the opening of her trial and that of 24 other people and the National Rally, suspected of having diverted funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees.
Before entering the room of the judicial court which will host for two months this trial with heavy political stakes for the leader of the French extreme right, she said she was completely “serene”. “We did not violate any rules,” she told the press.
“We have a lot of arguments to develop to defend what appears to me to be the parliamentary freedom which is at issue in this affair,” added the president of the RN group in the Assembly, before entering the room where she is seated in the front row, surrounded by Nicolas Crochet, party accountant and Catherine Griset, a very close friend.
The trial opened this Monday. Nine former MEPs from the National Front (renamed RN), 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 will appear. Alongside them, 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants and four party collaborators will also be judged in this trial scheduled for three half-days a week until November 27.
The leader of the RN has indicated that she intends to appear as much as possible in front of the judges, but on Tuesday, she could favor the general policy declaration of the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier to the National Assembly. And from the first minutes of the hearing, Marine Le Pen made it known that she would answer “all the questions that the court would like to ask me”.
“New items”
“Marine Le Pen has chosen to be very present in this trial. Some say she will hide, she will not come. No not at all. This is not the style of the house,” assured Sunday on RTL the deputy RN Sébastien Chenu, promising that Marine Le Pen would put forward “a certain number of new elements”.
The case began in 2015 with a report from the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz and concerns numerous parliamentary attaché contracts over a period of more than ten years (2004-2016).
For the prosecution, these “assistants”, struggling to describe their tasks, only had the title. Some had never even met their official employer or set foot in Parliament and, according to the prosecution, only worked for the party, which is prohibited under European regulations. 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…
The defendants, tried in particular for embezzlement of public funds or complicity in this crime, face a maximum of ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros and above all a ten-year ineligibility sentence likely to hamper the ambitions presidential elections of Marine Le Pen 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,” says Sébastien Chenu.
Most of the defendants contest as a whole, citing a “pooling” of the work of parliamentary assistants. The RN has been denouncing for years “relentlessness”, even a “political” procedure. “This case should never have come before the courts (…). Yes, our assistants worked (…), they worked with the National Rally and it was perfectly their right,” Bruno Gollnisch commented on BFM.
” System ? »
“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for in this affair,” Marine Le Pen, 56, declared in Le Parisien in mid-September, saying she wanted to explain at the bar that parliamentary assistants are “not employees of the European Parliament” and have “obviously a vocation, for a certain number of them, to engage in politics”.
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).
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.
