Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign is under investigation over suspicions of illegal financing following a report from the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP), the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday, confirming information from BFMTV.
Following a preliminary investigation, a judicial inquiry was opened on July 2 for loan of a legal person to a candidate during an election campaign, acceptance by a candidate during an election campaign of a loan from a legal person, misappropriation of property by persons exercising a public function, fraud committed to the detriment of a public person, forgery and use of forged documents, the prosecution explained.
Expenses already rejected
The CNCCFP, responsible for monitoring the regularity of candidates’ expenses, which are capped and part of which is reimbursed by the State, had sent a report to the Paris prosecutor’s office in 2023. The investigations, entrusted to the financial brigade of the Paris judicial police, “are therefore now continuing under the direction of an investigating magistrate”, added the public prosecutor. No details were given on the nature of the suspicions.
In mid-December 2022, the CNCCFP had rejected the expenses of “flocking and deflocking” twelve buses rented as part of the campaign of the leader of the National Rally, for an amount of 316,182 euros, considering that the use of this type of display constituted an irregular expense. The RN candidate, beaten in the second round by Emmanuel Macron, had filed an appeal with the Constitutional Council before giving up.
Marine Le Pen had invested nearly €11.5 million in her 2022 presidential campaign, her third. In 2017, she had already seen €873,576 of her expenses rejected by the Commission, 95% of which consisted of loans taken out from the National Front (FN, now RN) and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen’s micro-party, but she had not, at the time, filed an appeal.
In June, the Court of Cassation definitively upheld the RN’s conviction for overcharging for campaign kits used by Front National candidates during the 2012 legislative elections and reimbursed by the State. Marine Le Pen, re-elected as a member of parliament in the first round of early legislative elections on 30 June in her stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont, in the North, must also be tried with 24 other people and the RN from 30 September for misappropriation of European funds in connection with the remuneration of MEP assistants between 2004 and 2016.