In the trial of the alleged fictitious employment of parliamentary assistants of National Front MEPs, Me Nicolay Fakiroff demanded this Tuesday, November 19, 2024, the release of the mayor of Perpignan. Pleading for nearly two hours on a series of legal arguments, even legal-conspiracy and political, to try to thwart the heavy requisitions against Louis Aliot: 18 months in prison including 12 months suspended, €30,000 d fine, but also three of ineligibility with provisional execution. With the threat of losing his mandates at the head of the City and on the departmental council of Pyrénées-Orientales as soon as the judgment is rendered in early 2025.
He is at stake here and his political destiny. But Louis Aliot is a spectator this Tuesday afternoon at this trial which could well seal the end of his mandate as mayor of Perpignan, the most important city in France won by the National Rally. Marine Le Pen sat two rows behind, as if to establish a symbolic distance between the local elected official and the “system” of fraud with European funds accused of the far-right party. Laurent Salles, his supposedly fictitious parliamentary assistant, took his place, with a livid face, alongside the elected frontist who did not address him a word, nor the slightest glance. To continue to blacken his little notebook and to watch over his glasses for the reaction of the magistrates to his lawyer.
Today, Mr.e Nicolay Fakiroff carries the pell-mell words of “stainless” Bruno Gollnisch, “good father” Nicolas Bay, but also Louis Aliot“l’affable“who stood out in this matter by”a stubborn silence”. A group defense therefore which denounces requisitions “unworthy, outrageous, biased and in contempt of the individualization of sentences”. Who counterattacks at all costs, “ambiguity” from the status of parliamentary assistant at European level until “the offense of principle”, in going through the impossibility for the court to judge this case which should have possibly been sanctioned by the European Parliament. And who rebels against “double standards”. Reference, among other things, to the affair of the MoDem parliamentary assistants and its “symbolic penalties” pronounced. “It was a trial run. With the MoDem we pulled the trigger and, there, we fired live ammunition,” lance Me Fakiroff. Suddenly recognizing, after having tried for days to justify the reality of the targeted assistant jobs, that it was a question of “ shared, known and accepted practices” within Parliament.
“It was done like a dad with an obvious lack of rigor”
For the facts alleged against Louis Aliot, the lawyer admits it : “Ithere are weaknesses and approximations. And, he demonizes. “When he was elected MEP, he was a regional councilor, municipal councilor, and held functions as a leading executive of the National Front. He had two local assistants in Perpignan, one in Brussels, he needed a third assistant to take charge calls and sorting mail. It was done dad-style with an obvious lack of rigor. It's true, Laurent Salles has not been very productive, he devotes much more energy to his partisan activities and his local mandate. Louis Aliot quickly notices the inadequacies of his assistant who grumbles because he does not have his pay slips. And he terminates his contract. The notice is executed, paid and it's over. Louis Aliot does not have the profile of a fraudster who takes advantage of compensation to divert them from their legitimate destinations and put them in his pocket. And I ask you the question, according to the rule of Hanlon's Razor: “Why try to attribute to malice what can simply be explained by stupidity?”
As for the risk of ineligibility for the mayor of Perpignan, the lawyer will not even mention it. A defense strategy perhaps to make people forget or put a symbolic distance with the threat. And ward off fate…
France
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