After the close of the debates on Tuesday, November 12, the indictment against Marine Le Pen and 24 other defendants in the trial of RN parliamentary assistants is expected this Wednesday. The party leader faces ineligibility.
Home straight. This Wednesday, November 13, the prosecution must deliver its indictment in the trial of the parliamentary assistants of the National Rally. The one, which began on September 30, must end on November 27. In this case, 25 members of the RN, including Marine Le Pen, are on trial before the Paris Criminal Court.
All are appearing on suspicion of embezzlement of European public funds allegedly committed between September 1, 2009 and February 14, 2016. In this case, Marine le Pen faces a prison sentence, a fine and, above all, a sanction of ineligibility .
In addition to the Pas-de-Calais MP, eight former MEPs are appearing for embezzlement of public funds. This is the case of Louis Aliot, Marie-Christine Arnautu, Nicolas Bay, Bruno Gollnisch, Marie-Christine Boutonnet, Fernand Le Rachinel, Dominique Bilde and Mylène Troszczynski.
As for parliamentary assistants, no less than 12 people would have benefited from fictitious jobs.
“I have never said to an MP: you are going to take so-and-so, that’s false”
In their pleadings on Tuesday, November 12, the European Parliament's lawyers attacked what they call a “collective defense system”. Concretely, according to Me Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer for the European Parliament, a “system” would have been put in place between 2004 and 2016 to remunerate parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the party with the agent of the European Parliament.
Accusations that Marine Le Pen had already refuted. “If we are convinced that there is a system, that everything is suspicious, obviously you will find something,” argued the three-time presidential candidate. “We are dealing with around ten emails, SMS messages, which we consider to be poorly written, suspicious, clumsy. But that’s still about ten emails out of tens of thousands,” she argued.
At the bar, the member for Pas-de-Calais, judged in this case in her capacity as “president of the National Rally” at the time of the events, had insisted several times: “Never” has there been an “instruction » to “empty” the envelopes of MEPs in order to pay “fictitious” parliamentary assistants who actually worked for the party, as the prosecution is convinced.
“I have never said to an MP: you are going to take so-and-so, it’s false, it’s a lie,” assured Marine Le Pen. She barely admits to having had a “right of veto” over “politically toxic people”, “nuisances” or “notorious incompetents”.
The European Parliament had made an initial estimate of its financial damage at three million euros, but revised it to 4.5 million during the trial. The lawyer of the European body, Me Patrick Maisonneuve, dismissed on Tuesday November 12 all accusations of conspiracy that the RN denounces, recalling that “a year ago, I was in this same courtroom in the trial said of the MoDem.
The European Parliament's lawyers are demanding convictions for all the defendants and compensation for moral damage, i.e. 300,000 euros and 5,000 euros per defendant for legal costs.
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