No “system” of embezzlement at the National Rally (RN): after a month of trial in France, Marine Le Pen began to explain late Tuesday afternoon on the use, fraudulent according to the accusation , European money by his far-right party.
In a black suit and ankle boots, she joined the bar of the Paris court shortly before 6 p.m., while the ex-treasurer of the party was closed.
“Since” the start of the trial, “we have been dealing with around ten emails, SMS messages, which we consider to be poorly written, suspicious, clumsy. But that remains around ten emails out of tens of thousands,” begins Madame Le Pen, as soon as the president gives her the floor.
In a tirade lasting more than an hour, the three-time candidate for the presidential election in France unfolds her argument, sometimes rewriting the file, evading the angry points.
In 2014, with 23 newly elected European deputies and without a parliamentary group, the National Front (FN, now RN) was obliged to “pool” the work of its assistants, says the defendant. Moreover, “centralization” is part of the “culture of the National Front”, she adds.
However, this does not mean that the MEPs' envelopes, 21,000 euros per month, were managed by the party leadership in particular to pay “fictitious” parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the party as the party is convinced. accusation, she insists.
Question after question, contract by contract, since September 30 the court has been dissecting this famous “system” – the word puts Ms. Le Pen beside herself – which would have allowed the RN to “relieve the finances” of the party between 2004 and 2016.
The European Parliament made an initial estimate of its financial damage at three million euros, but warned that it could change.
“Destabilized”
The eight other former Frontist MEPs and twelve of their parliamentary assistants, tried alongside him for embezzlement of public funds and concealment of this crime, all swore to have worked within the rules. Even if the collaborators occupied particularly important positions in France, such as bodyguard or personal assistant to Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founder of the FN and father of Marine Le Pen.
“The fact of being a parliamentary assistant says nothing about the content of the work. It will go from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphic designer, from the bodyguard to the one who runs the duty,” says the head of the French extreme right. “There are as many possible tasks as there are parliamentary assistants!”
After being compared as an MEP, she is associated with her second “hat”, president of the party, of which she took the helm after her father in 2011, to answer this time for complicity in embezzlement of public funds.
“I have never said to an MP: ‘you are going to take so-and-so’, it’s false, it’s a lie,” she assures during her monologue. Just admitting to having a “right of veto” over “politically toxic people”, “nuisances” or “notorious incompetents”.
“If we are convinced that there is a system, that everything is suspicious, obviously you will find something,” she tells the court – which has still not asked a question. Before sharing his “feelings” from this month of hearing: “on many occasions, your opinion was already made up, our arguments evacuated […] It unsettled me a little.”
The court, which continued its questioning in the evening, should notably question her about two meetings in the summer of 2014, in Brussels then Strasbourg. According to several testimonies, it was announced to the new MEPs that they would only have the right to one parliamentary assistant, and that the rest of their envelope would be for the FN.
“What Marine (Le Pen) demands of us is equivalent to what we sign for fictitious jobs,” a refractory MEP wrote to the party treasurer shortly after.
“I understand Marine’s reasons, but we are going to be fired because we will, of course, be looking closely at our uses with such a large group” (23 deputies compared to three previously), he also noted.
“I believe that Marine knows all of this…” replied the treasurer. “You don't have to believe me but I am convinced that Marine Le Pen would never have proposed something illegal to the deputies who have just been elected,” assured the latter at the helm.
The trial is scheduled until November 27.
