RN trial: time for requisitions for Marine Le Pen and her co-defendants

After a month and a half of trial, it is time for requisitions for Marine Le Pen, the National Rally and 24 other defendants, accused of having embezzled funds from the European Parliament for the benefit of the far-right party.

The two-vote requisitions should begin around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, and last all day. After general considerations, the two representatives of the prosecution, Louise Neyton and Nicolas Barret, should begin by developing their analysis of the “system” which, according to them, was put in place at the National Front (now National Rally) between 2004 and 2016.

According to the accusation, a “centralized management system” was established to “empty” the envelopes of 21,000 euros per month to which MEPs were entitled, to pay “fictitious” parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the party (as a bodyguard, graphic designer or secretary), with a view to “relieving finances”.

Prosecutors should then focus on the case of each of the defendants: the nine former Frontist MEPs, their 12 former parliamentary assistants, the accountants and the treasurer, and finally the party itself. In total, there are 26 defendants, tried before the criminal court for embezzlement of public funds, complicity or concealment of this offense.

Finally, in the late afternoon or early evening, prosecutors are expected to announce the sentences requested against each person.

They face sentences of up to 10 years’ imprisonment, a fine of one million euros and a penalty of ineligibility – which could seriously hamper Marine Le Pen’s ambitions for the 2027 presidential election.

If such a sentence were imposed, it would have “extremely serious consequences,” she argued at the bar. “That would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate, that’s it.”

“Behind there are 11 million people who voted for the movement that I represent. So tomorrow potentially, millions and millions of French people would actually be deprived of their presidential candidate,” she argued.

Since the opening of this trial on September 30, where she attended almost all the hearings, the three-time presidential candidate has been questioned under several hats: that of a former European deputy, to explain the disputed contracts concluded with some of her parliamentary assistants, that of former party leader (between 2011 and 2016), and finally as a representative of the National Rally, judged as a legal entity – she had a power from the current president Jordan Bardella for that.

Each time, she proclaimed her “innocence”, that of her party and her co-defendants. “No” system, but a lot of “lies,” “fictions” and “misunderstandings,” she swore at the bar, also saying her “feeling” that the court’s opinion “was already made.”

Throughout the trial, she dodged inconvenient questions, sometimes rewriting the case. And got fired up during long monologues on the “reality” of the life of a political party, eager to explain it again and again… Even if it meant exasperating the court which dryly and at length told her that she was fed up -bol, during his last interrogation on Wednesday: “Here, we are not in politics, we are before a criminal court,” President Bénédicte de Perthuis told him.

During the interrogations (around thirty in total), the defendants struggled to provide proof of work or justify compromising email exchanges – speaking of “placing” such a person on a contract, “transferring” or “passing” from one MP to another – shared a similar defense, “sometimes bordering on the absurd”, as European Parliament lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said in his pleading on Tuesday.

“Most of the defendants seemed to me to be quite prisoners of a system of collective defense”, following in rank “the line set” by the leader, Marine Le Pen, he estimated.

The European Parliament estimated its financial damage at 4.5 million euros, but only claimed 3.4 million (a part having already been reimbursed).

After the closing arguments, the trial will resume next Monday, with defense arguments scheduled for two weeks.