Marine Le Pen and 26 other members of the National Rally are on trial from this Monday, September 30, 2024 in the case of suspicion of fictitious employment of party assistants in the European Parliament. What you need to know about the case.
A decisive and high-risk trial for the National Rally (RN). The far-right party, its daughter leader Marine Le Pen as well as 26 other elected officials and executives of the political party must appear in court from this Monday, September 30 and for two months for the affair of the fictitious jobs of assistants in the European Parliament.
Marine Le Pen, president of the RN (called National Front before 2018) until 2021, as well as 11 people elected to the European Parliament, 12 parliamentary assistants and 4 party collaborators will be tried by the Paris Criminal Court for embezzlement of public funds and complicity in embezzlement of public funds. They are accused of having, between 2004 and 2016, used funds allocated by the European Parliament to MEPs from the far-right party to finance the operation of the RN. The damage is estimated at nearly 7 million euros.
This affair has shaken the party since it broke out in 2015 and again in recent months, as the trial approaches, with new press investigations which make it possible to suspect a large-scale scam, of which Marine Le Pen was aware. The former boss of the RN risks big with this trial: she faces up to ten years in prison, a million euros fine and a penalty of ineligibility of up to 10 years in accordance with article 131- 26-1 of the Penal Code. This conviction would deprive her of running for president in three years. The National Rally, however, says it is confident and certain of its innocence before the start of the trial, with Marine Le Pen in the lead. “We are not afraid of this trial. We are going into it with our heads held high with arguments” declared party spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli on Franceinfo on September 30. As for the risk of Marine Le Pen’s ineligibility “we don’t believe it” adds the MP.
A “system” of generalized fictitious jobs
According to investigative evidence and the testimonies of several witnesses, the RN has set up a vast system of fictitious jobs with the aim of making the funding allocated by the European Parliament profitable. It was in 2014, after the arrival of Marine Le Pen at the head of the party and when the RN went from 3 to 24 elected representatives in the European Parliament that the affair gained momentum. Each MP can then receive an envelope of 23,000 euros per month to finance the recruitment of parliamentary assistants. A financial windfall thanks to which the party, which was experiencing great difficulties at the time, wanted to get back afloat at a lower cost.
According to the accusations, during a meeting on June 4, 2014, orders were given to each of the 24 MEPs of the RN to recruit a parliamentary assistant responsible for supporting him and to leave all other parliamentary assistants who could be recruited at the party’s disposal. . The said instruction is reported by Nicolas Franchinard, a former parliamentary assistant to three former elected officials of the RN who testified to Médiapart, and is mentioned by elected officials.
Sophie Montel, who was a European deputy for the RN from 2014 to 2019, also revealed this instruction from the leadership of the far-right party in her live published in 2019, Tragic ball at the National Front. Thirty years at the heart of the Le Pen system. She quoted a statement from the party leadership: “I am telling you that you will have the choice to recruit an assistant yourself and that the rest of your parliamentary assistance envelope will be made available to the party.”
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Warnings against the illegal nature of this organization, comparable to a system of fictitious jobs, were sent to Marine Le Pen’s cabinet and to the party’s treasurer at the time, Wallerand de Saint-Just, according to emails consulted by Médiapart. Which seemed, according to these same emails, aware of the fraudulent aspect of the system. Marine Le Pen has always denied being involved in the management of parliamentary funds and simply indicated that she had been informed of the recruitments carried out by MEPs as well as the centralized management of parliamentary funds supposed, according to the party’s defense, to facilitate the task of parliamentarians and to the assistants.
Suspicions of fictitious jobs arose in 2015 with the publication of a new RN organization chart on which appear around twenty names of parliamentary assistants in positions of responsibility. A combination of functions at the origin of suspicions about fictitious jobs which pushed the President of the European Parliament at the time, Martin Schulz, to report the situation. The investigation then begins and it turns out that several parliamentary assistants dedicated to parliamentary work do not know the other assistants holding a position within the RN as indicated by Nicolas Franchinard at Médiapart.
False documents to deny accusations of fictitious jobs
To counter suspicions about the fictitious jobs of the RN in the European Parliament, documents supposed to prove the effectiveness of the work of parliamentary assistants were provided by certain members of the party, including Jordan Bardella. The journalist of ReleaseTristan Berteloot, returns to these false documents in an investigative book and argues that “to camouflage this fictitious employment, the current president of the RN helped produce false proof of work”, in particular a “phony agenda” and a “review of press backdated and initialed by his hand”.
The president of the RN is accused of having fictitiously held a job and of having been paid by the European Parliament while he worked for the benefit of the party, but he is not prosecuted in the trial. At the time, he was employed on a part-time fixed-term contract for a monthly salary of 1,200 euros. According to Release, Jordan Bardella was not prosecuted so as to “not add to an already substantial case”.
MEP Nicolas Bay, implicated in the trial which opened on September 30, also provided documents to the courts to prove his effective work as a parliamentarian, as well as that of his assistant at the time, Timothé Toussaint, according to a survey of Franceinfo and Further investigation. The documents raise certain inconsistencies, in particular linked to dates or the highlighting of content and subjects subsequent to the targeted period while the press reviews were presented as elements produced between 2014 and 2015. Nicolas Bay defends himself by assuring having “never claimed to the courts or to anyone else that these documents, in the form provided to the judge, dated from 2014” and maintains that “there is no false proof of work” reports Franceinfo.
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