[Article publié dimanche 29 septembre, mis à jour ce lundi à 6h30] Autumn is just beginning, grayness envelops Paris. During the lunch break, not far from the Assembly, a National Rally deputy is a little worried. “ The RN is far behind in media speaking time, he notes. We’re going to be invited on set a lot over the next few days… » Rather experienced in the television exercise, the heavyweights of the nationalist party know that from this Monday, and at regular intervals for two months, they will be addressed on an embarrassing affair.
This Monday – as planned since the spring – the so-called trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the National Front opens. This heavy, dense but overwhelming file has been poisoning Marine Le Pen’s life for years. One among 27 defendants, to which is added her movement as a legal entity, the leader of the frontist group at the Palais-Bourbon will be judged by the criminal court for “ embezzlement of public funds » et « complicity in embezzlement of public funds ».
Laurent Warlouzet: “Marine Le Pen vilifies the EU while needing its money”
A political earthquake in France
The moment is paradoxical. The National Rally has never experienced dynamics comparable to that of the last two years. The day after the European elections, where the list led by Jordan Bardella came well ahead with 31.4% of the votes and 30 seats in the Strasbourg Parliament, the RN elected (including its allies) 143 deputies in the early legislative elections. It was even announced, for a time, capable of obtaining a majority in the National Assembly and therefore of governing. Despite the poor performance in July, Marine Le Pen put herself back at the center of the political game by making her prior non-censorship the lifeblood of the new executive and Michel Barnier. To the point that, this week, a minister was called to order by Matignon for having affirmed that the RN did not belong to the “republican arc”. The elected official from Pas-de-Calais received her apology phone call from the Prime Minister.
As on parallel rails, the same however had to prepare for a more unpleasant deadline. First indicted for “breach of trust”, prosecution reclassified as “embezzlement”, Marine Le Pen is accused of having organized, with other ex-FN executives, a vast financial bailout system of his party thanks to European Union funds – taxpayers’ money, therefore. The period scrutinized by the investigating judges runs from 2004 to 2016, but the turning point was in May 2014, when the FN managed to elect 24 MEPs. A political earthquake in France which suddenly results in a considerable windfall for this movement rendered bloodless by electoral defeats and costly campaigns.
Until now, the far-right boutique run by Jean-Marie Le Pen – he handed the reins to his daughter in 2011 – has had relatively few elected officials in the European Parliament. This does not prevent the patriarch and his relatives from already making their own use of the credits allocated each month by the institution to MEPs for the hiring of their collaborators. Among the numerous testimonies reproduced in the referral order drawn up by the investigating judges, to which La Tribune Sunday had access, that of the former frontist parliamentarian Fernand Le Rachinel is enlightening. He explains that “ each deputy managed to have more or less an assistant […] which was really dedicated to him and the rest of the envelope was dedicated to the remuneration of people chosen by Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was a question of accommodating the staff of the group ».
Jordan Bardella in the office of his parliamentary assistants in Brussels, February 2020. (Credits: LTD/MARTIN BERTRAND/HANS LUCAS VIA AFP)
Increased each year, this envelope exceeded 21,000 euros gross per month at the time of the 2014 victory. It was at that time that the treasurer of the National Front, Wallerand de Saint-Just, explained to the leader that the only way to avoid bankruptcy is to do “ significant savings thanks to the European Parliament “. In short, to hire a whole battery of collaborators who carry out most of their work – if not all – for the party, but thanks to contracts attached to Strasbourg and Brussels. Among the most emblematic cases, that of Thierry Légier, historic bodyguard of Le Pen who held European fixed-term contracts from 2015 to 2022. Or that of Yann Le Pen, sister of Marine, who does not set foot in the European Parliament during the two years she was “assistant” to Bruno Gollnisch. She was then in charge of events at the FN. Represented by Me Patrick Maisonneuve, the community assembly estimated its financial damage at nearly 7 million euros.
The affair involves some party pundits like Louis Aliot or the former secretary general Nicolas Bay, without forgetting, of course, Jean-Marie Le Pen himself. Aged 96, the co-founder of the National Front will skip court due to his precarious health. Her daughter will go there at least two of the three afternoons per week where the trial will take place until November 27. The courtroom is not terra incognita for the ex-lawyer, whose entourage likes to say that she has rediscovered the reflexes of the profession in the ordeal. Above all, Marine Le Pen has been heard numerous times by the courts. Here for the affair of the “false leaflets” written in Arabic and calling to vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in Hénin-Beaumont in 2012; there for the distribution on Twitter, in 2015, of photos of executions perpetrated by Daesh; or even, under the status of assisted witness, in the thick Jeanne file, that of the “campaign kits” of FN candidates overcharged to inflate State reimbursements.
Did she have any other choice this time than to take the wind head on, at the helm? “ I have the weakness to think that I will be relaxed, affirmed Marine Le Pen in La Tribune Sunday from September 8. I am very sure of our innocence. » The problem is that its centrality in the system identified by the investigators seems obvious. As at this famous meeting of June 4, 2014, in Brussels, where she indicated to her troops: “ You will have the choice to recruit an assistant yourself and […] the rest of your parliamentary assistance envelope will be made available to the movement. » Or the same system as that put in place by his father.
Some MEPs would have tried to stand up to him to maintain their autonomy, without success. One of them, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, wrote a few weeks later to Wallerand de Saint-Just to express alarm at the “fictitious jobs” that the boss was asking them to arrange. “ It is the MP who is criminally responsible for his own funds even if the party is the beneficiary, continues the elected official. I understand Marine’s reasons but we’re going to get fired up because we’ll definitely be looking closely at our uses with such a large group. » Laconic response from the treasurer: “ I believe Marine knows all of this. » According to recent revelations by Tristan Berteloot, journalist at Libération, the FN-RN went so far as to falsify working documents by backdating them to prove the activity of certain collaborators… including the current president of the movement, Jordan Bardella.
Marine Le Pen: “We expect action from Michel Barnier”
When she gathered her loved ones this summer, either in La Trinité-sur-Mer or in her house in Yvelines, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter was lucid. “ Intellectually, it keeps him very busy, underlines a witness to these discussions. Marine is aware that this is going to be a complicated period and a real subject for laborious argumentation. I don’t think she thinks this is a political trial, but she is worried about the political use that will be made of it. » In addition to a prison sentence and a heavy fine, the three-time presidential candidate faces up to five years of ineligibility. Such a legal peril is unprecedented for Marine Le Pen. Those close to him minimize it by affirming, first of all, that no judge would allow himself to “deprive” his millions of voters of their representative. “ This would be the worst democratic crisis since the departure of General de Gaulle », exclaims Jean-Philippe Tanguy, one of the group’s deputy presidents in the National Assembly.
Also present in everyone’s mind is the suspensive effect of an appeal, then of an appeal to the Court of Cassation, if by chance ineligibility were to be pronounced at first instance. “ If there is a conviction, it will be after 2027, reassures a loyal supporter of the boss. Until then, the French don’t care! » The less said about it, the better. The same source cites the preliminary investigation which still weighs on La France insoumise for similar facts – on a much smaller scale – and the outcome of the MoDem trial, judged at the end of 2023. Five former centrist MEPs were convicted but their leader, François Bayrou, was acquitted “for the benefit of the doubt” on the establishment of a real system of which he would have been the authorizing officer. Except that on the one hand the prosecution appealed this decision, and on the other hand the mayor of Pau was not elected to the European Parliament during the period in question. Marine Le Pen, yes.
« The file seems damn well put together, admits a cog in the RN delegation in Strasbourgit’s going to be difficult to get out of the rut. The MoDem allowed its assistants to play politics, it was just less centralized. » It is precisely the qualification of the role of collaborator that the defendants and their counsel intend to target, one of the main ones of which has long been Alexandre Varaut, elected MEP in June. A lieutenant of Marine Le Pen sums up their strategy: “ What we want to demonstrate is the gap between the German vision of the parliamentary assistant, which prevails in the European Parliament, and the French vision. » According to the National Rally, Brussels requires its elected officials and their teams to be simple civil servants. However, the defendants will defend, activism is inseparable from the parliamentary function.
According to a statement from the nationalist movement in the European Parliament, the Lepenists “ know very well that they can only hide behind this argument ». « To what extent can the institution influence the function of the elected official? It’s a real subject, continues this advisor, but where they are only hanging by a thread is on ineligibility. If the judges consider that Marine is the head of an organized gang fraud network, everyone will receive the same sentence. » In Paris, the deputies know that they can only wait.
The boss will hand over the reins from time to time to Jean-Philippe Tanguy and his partner Sébastien Chenu but will keep an eye on budgetary discussions and opportunities to put pressure on the government. “ Our elements of language have not changed, slips an executive from the RN groupwe let justice work, other parties are concerned, etc. The truth is that we have absolutely no control. As for Marine, she doesn’t want us to make a fuss, to multiply comments at the same time. » The member for Pas-de-Calais will go to court this Monday for the first day of hearing. Tomorrow, Tuesday, she will sit in the hemicycle for Michel Barnier’s general policy declaration. Until the end of November, the two subjects will be intertwined.
