The Paris prosecutor's office requires a sentence of ineligibility against the president of the RN deputies. A harsh indictment for Marine Le Pen, who, accused of having embezzled funds from the European Parliament for the benefit of her party, proclaimed “her innocence” throughout her trial like that of the 26 other defendants.
The ax fell this Wednesday, November 13. The Paris court prosecutor's office requires a sentence of ineligibility against Marine Le Pen. He considers that the provisional execution of this sentence of ineligibility is necessary.
This means that if the court pronounces this sentence with provisional execution, Marine Le Pen does not escape it and cannot appear even if she appeals the judgment.
In addition, the prosecution requires five years in prison including two convertible farms as well as a fine of 300,000 euros.
She faces up to ten years in prison
The president of the deputies of the National Rally faces up to ten years in prisona fine of one million euros, but especially for the one who does not hide her ambitions for the 2027 presidential election a ten-year ineligibility sentence.
Since September 30, the judges have been considering the so-called affair of the parliamentary assistants of the Frontist partya file of suspicions of fictitious jobs aimed at diverting money from the European Parliament for the benefit of the party.
“Fictitious” parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament
According to the accusation, a “centralized management system” was established to “empty” the envelopes of 21,000 euros per month paid to MEPs as allowances to pay their parliamentary assistants. This money would in reality have been used to pay employees who worked for the party (as bodyguards, graphic designers or secretaries). The objective of this system would have been to “relieve finances”.
“We are not here because of relentlessness but at the end of a judicial investigation,” the prosecutors warned from the outset, in this two-voiced indictment, rejecting the accusations of “supposed relentlessness with political connotations” to against the RN.
Despite the very assiduous presence of Marine Le Pen who insisted on defending herself point by point, the defendants had good struggling to convince judges of the reality of the job of their parliamentary assistants supposed to work for the European Parliament, as specified in the institution's internal regulations. “You have a panel of evidence”, insisted one of the two prosecutors in court, listing the “statements of each and every other”, the material evidence – the famous emails found – and the absence of proof of the work carried out by the assistants.
This Wednesday morning, the former presidential candidate denounced a legal procedure that was “more than shaky”. Sitting in the front row, the MP listened dejectedly to the prosecution's requisitions.
After the closing arguments, the trial will resume next Monday, with defense arguments scheduled for two weeks.
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