The affair of the parliamentary assistants gives the party a cold sweat

POLITICS – It’s a strange start to the National Rally. A strange political start, but also a legal one since the far-right party is preparing to find itself in the dock. Eight years of investigation, nearly 7 million euros at stake and 27 party executives on trial, including Marine Le Pen who is at high risk… This is the business of the RN parliamentary assistants that we will explain to you in our video at the top of the article.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen, Louis Aliot, Wallerand de Saint-Just… All are – or were – figures of the National Front which became the National Rally. And all of them (but not Jordan Bardella) are suspected of having taken part in a vast system of fictitious jobs and embezzlement of European funds for the benefit of their party.

Twenty parliamentary assistants in the viewfinder

It all started in 2015. The National Rally published its organizational chart, and Brussels wondered. At the time, twenty parliamentary assistants from the National Front in the European Parliament also held key positions within the flame party in Paris. This is for example the case of Julien Odoul, special advisor to Marine Le Pen and assistant to MEP Mylène Troszczynski between 2014 and 2016.

“We now need to check where they actually work, for the European Parliament or for the party, explains the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz on France 3 on March 10, 2015. We cannot work for the European Parliament and for a party.”

Parliament is demanding hundreds of thousands of euros in reimbursement from five Frontist deputies, including Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen, while the investigation arrives in the hands of French justice with this question: Did the National Front is he making savings at the expense of Europe, via fictitious jobs as parliamentary assistants?

Damage estimated at 6.8 million euros

Especially since at the time, the party’s coffers were suffering. As evidenced by this letter written by the treasurer of the National Front Wallerand de Saint-Just on June 16, 2014, discovered by investigators and revealed by The World. « In the years to come and in all cases, we will only get through this if we make significant savings thanks to the European Parliament and if we obtain additional payments. can we read. In 2018, the European Parliament estimated the damage at 6.8 million euros.

In France, Marine Le Pen repeatedly refused to appear before judges, and was finally indicted in 2017 for embezzlement of public funds.

Over the years, the FN, renamed RN, refuted any fictitious employment. “ They played politics with their MP. It is certain, they did not do the work for the European Union! “, annoys Marine Le Pen on the set of The political show on France 2 on March 14, 2019.

“Judicial relentlessness”

The accused and other members of the party have been crying out for judicial and media vindictiveness since the beginning of the investigation. “It’s a media search (…) on an affair which is as empty as space, it’s nothingness, total emptiness” protests Florian Philippot, still a member of the RN, this February 20, 2017 on BFMTV. “The French understood that there was judicial relentlessness (…) and everything is good to harm the interests of these people”further denounces the vice-president of the RN Louis Aliot, on April 2, 2024.

The sequence could in any case cost the National Rally, the 27 accused, but especially Marine Le Pen who faces up to five years of ineligibility. A sentence that could stop his ambitions three years before the next presidential election. But the far-right leader hopes for a judgment like the one from which François Bayrou benefited in a similar case.

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