Marine Le Pen clearly felt that we had to regain control. “I had the impression, on many occasions, that your opinion was already made upsaid the former leader of the National Rally (RN) in court. There are people in front of you who have iron words, others who are inaudible. » The president obviously protested, but it is not false, as the parade of defendants at the trial of the FN assistants of the European Parliament left, after seventeen days of hearing, an overwhelming impression of improbable remarks and lies clumsy.
Marine Le Pen, already on trial as the author of “embezzlement of public funds” for having employed her bodyguard, her sister, her secretary and her father's secretary in Strasbourg, was, on Tuesday, November 5, heard as “accomplice” of the embezzlements, since she led the party from 2011 to 2021. The member for Pas-de-Calais, who had been pawing for a while, flew over the audience with certain talent, intact energy and a constructed speech, if not always convincing.
For an hour and a half, she gave her vision of the case, before responding, step by step, to the court, without giving up an inch of ground. “Among the tens of thousands of messages from the party, the investigating judges extracted around ten emails, suspicious or clumsy, around which we turn to prove the existence of a system”attacked the MP. This system, which she is supposed, after Jean-Marie Le Pen, to have organized, is based on a series of elements that she tried to exclude.
“Unofficially, but not concealed”
Firstly, “pooling”, theoretically prohibited, which requires an assistant to work for his only MP. “In 2014, we have 23 elected representatives, whereas previously there were 3, so we had 20 novice deputies, attacked Marine Le Pen. To form a group, there must be 25, which allows us to have around fifty employees working for the entire group. We were not registered, we were obliged to pool. Some assistants worked for several deputies, unofficially, but not hiddenly. And the European Parliament found nothing wrong with it. »
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“Centralization”, then. All FN deputies (except two) have given power of attorney to a single assistant to manage relations with the administration and the ” third party payer », the accounting firm close to the FN in charge of finances. “Centralization is in the culture of our movement, s'agace Mme Le Pen. It was simpler for the deputies and it suited Parliament, and not once did they come to tell us that there were too many proxies. I don't see how the proxies and the third party payment could constitute the beginning of the beginning of a suspicion. »
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