Trial of FN European aides: Marine Le Pen claims “to have violated no rules” | National front

Her party has “not violated any rules” and she “will answer all questions” from the court. Marine Le Pen wanted to display her “serenity” on Monday at the opening of her trial and that of 24 other people and the National Rally, suspected of having embezzled funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees.

“I will answer all the questions that the court wants to ask me,” assured Marine Le Pen at the bar of the Paris criminal court. When reading the alleged offenses, we see her stiffen, in her strict black suit.

The hearing began at 1:45 p.m., President Bénédicte de Perthuis beginning by calling the defendants one by one to the stand to list the offenses with which they are accused and verify their identities and addresses – Marine Le Pen as the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch who “still receives threats” he says, ask to be able to exceptionally not give it in public.

A two-month trial

Before entering the court room, which will host for two months this trial with heavy political stakes for the leader of the French nationalist right, she said she was completely “serene”. “We did not violate any rules,” she told the press.

“We have a lot of arguments to develop to defend what appears to me to be the parliamentary freedom which is at issue in this affair,” added the president of the RN group in the Assembly, before sitting in the front row surrounded Nicolas Crochet, an accountant also on trial, and Catherine Griset, a very close friend, also accused at the trial.

Nine former MEPs from the National Front (renamed RN) will appear, including Marine Le Pen, Louis Aliot, now vice-president of the RN, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, and the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.

Alongside them, 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants and four party collaborators will also be tried in this trial scheduled for three half-days a week until November 27.

The court formally ordered at the start of the hearing the separation of the cases of Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96 years old, and former MEP Jean-François Jalkh, their state of health not allowing them to “be present” or to “prepare their defense”.

Marine Le Pen has indicated that she intends to appear as much as possible in front of the judges, but will not be present on Tuesday, expected at the National Assembly for the general policy declaration of the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

The case began in 2015 with a report from the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz and concerns numerous parliamentary attaché contracts over a period of more than ten years (2004-2016).

For the prosecution, these “assistants”, struggling to describe their tasks, only had the title. Some had never even met their official employer or set foot in Parliament and, according to the accusation, only worked for the party – which is prohibited under European regulations.

These include the historic bodyguard of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, Thierry Légier, his secretary, Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff, Catherine Griset, and even the party’s graphic designer.

Marine Le Pen risks a ten-year ineligibility sentence

The defendants, tried in particular for embezzlement of public funds or complicity in this crime, face a maximum of ten years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros and above all a ten-year ineligibility sentence likely to hamper the ambitions presidential elections of Marine Le Pen for 2027.

“But there is no reason for her to be declared ineligible since François Bayrou, prosecuted for the same facts, also president of a political party, was acquitted. So what is valid for one should be valid for the other”, wants to believe the RN deputy Sébastien Chenu.

Most of the defendants contest as a whole, citing a “pooling” of the work of parliamentary assistants. The RN has been denouncing for years “relentlessness”, even a “political” procedure.

“This case should never have come before the courts (…). Yes, our assistants worked (…), they worked with the National Rally and it was perfectly their right,” Mr. Gollnisch commented on BFM.

“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for in this affair,” Marine Le Pen, 56, declared in Le Parisien in mid-September, saying she wanted to explain at the bar that parliamentary assistants are “not employees of the European Parliament” and have “obviously a vocation, for a certain number of them, to engage in politics”.

The European Parliament, civil party, estimated its financial damage at three million euros. He will only claim two million, one million having already been reimbursed (which is not an admission of guilt, assured the RN).

The Paris prosecutor’s office mentioned in 2023 “a real system put in place to have the European Parliament bear part of the operating costs of the FN by covering the salaries of a growing number of its employees”.

This “system”, validated by Jean-Marie Le Pen and then his daughter, according to the prosecution, would have accelerated with the entry into Parliament in 2014 of 23 FN MEPs (compared to three previously).