Marine Le Pen is expected to take the stand this Monday, October 14 for her first interrogation in the trial of the RN parliamentary assistants.
The Paris criminal court questions this Monday, October 14, 2024 Marine Le Pen and 24 other people from the National Rally (RN) for suspicion of fictitious employment as assistants to MEPs. This is the first interrogation of the ex-president of the RN (called National Front before 2018) since the start of the hearings on October 30. Marine Le Pen will have to explain why some of her parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament appeared at the same time in the organization chart of the flame party. This interrogation must last three half-days.
In this decisive and high-risk trial for the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, president of the RN until 2021, as well as 9 people elected to the European Parliament, 12 parliamentary assistants and 4 party collaborators are tried by the Paris Criminal Court for embezzlement of public funds and complicity in embezzlement of public funds. They are accused of having, between 2004 and 2016, used funds allocated by the European Parliament to MEPs from the far-right party to finance the operation of the RN. The damage is estimated at nearly 7 million euros.
What is accused of Marine Le Pen and members of the RN
The investigation elements and the testimonies of several witnesses suggest that the RN would have set up a vast system of fictitious jobs with the aim of making profitable the funding allocated by the European Parliament. It was in 2014, after the arrival of Marine Le Pen at the head of the party and when the RN went from 3 to 24 elected representatives in the European Parliament that the affair gained momentum. Each MP can then receive an envelope of 21,000 euros per month to finance the recruitment of parliamentary assistants. A financial windfall thanks to which the party, which was experiencing great difficulties at the time, wanted to get back afloat at a lower cost.
According to the accusations, during a meeting on June 4, 2014, orders were given to each of the 24 MEPs of the RN to recruit a parliamentary assistant responsible for supporting him and to leave all other parliamentary assistants who could be recruited at the party’s disposal. . The said instruction is reported by Nicolas Franchinard, a former parliamentary assistant to three former elected officials of the RN who testified to Médiapart, and is mentioned by elected officials.
Suspicions of fictitious jobs arose in 2015 with the publication of a new RN organizational chart on which appear around twenty names of parliamentary assistants in positions of responsibility within the party. A combination of functions at the origin of suspicions about fictitious jobs which pushed the President of the European Parliament at the time, Martin Schulz, to report the situation. The investigation then begins and it turns out that the parliamentary assistants actually working in the European Parliament do not know several other assistants suspected of fictitious employment as indicated by Nicolas Franchinard at Médiapart.
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Evidence against the RN and Marine Le Pen
Several elements allowing confirmation of the initial instructions given by the party leadership concerning the recruitment of parliamentary assistants and for what purposes were obtained, in particular meeting minutes or even the declarations of several former MEPs. This is the case of Aymeric Chauprade who testified to Médiapart And Further investigation in 2017 before retracting and questioning his statements. Sophie Montel, who was a European deputy for the RN from 2014 to 2019, also revealed this instruction from the leadership of the far-right party in her live published in 2019, Tragic ball at the National Front. Thirty years at the heart of the Le Pen system. She even cited a statement from the party leadership: “I am telling you that you will have the choice to recruit an assistant yourself and that the rest of your parliamentary assistance envelope will be made available to the party.”
Documents obtained during various searches, in particular exchanges of emails, tend to show that a “system of embezzlement” of public funds was put in place “in a concerted and deliberate manner” according to the investigating judges. There is, for example, an exchange in which the treasurer of the FN at the time, Vallerand de Saint-Just, indicated to Marine Le Pen that the party “[ne s’en sortira] only if we make significant savings thanks to the European Parliament and if we obtain additional payments.”
Warnings from certain MEPs against the illegal nature of this organization, comparable to a system of fictitious jobs, were sent to Marine Le Pen’s office and the treasurer according to emails consulted by Médiapart. Which seemed, according to these same emails, aware of the fraudulent aspect of the system. Marine Le Pen has always denied being involved in the management of parliamentary funds and simply indicated that she had been informed of the recruitments carried out by MEPs as well as the centralized management of parliamentary funds supposed, according to the party’s defense, to facilitate the task of parliamentarians and to the assistants.
The convictions incurred by Marine Le Pen and the defendants at the RN trial
The former boss of the RN risks big with this trial: she faces up to ten years in prison, a million euros fine and a penalty of ineligibility of up to 10 years in accordance with article 131-26-1 of the Penal Code. This conviction would deprive her of running for president in three years. All defendants face the same penalties.
The National Rally, however, says it is confident and certain of its innocence before the start of the trial, with Marine Le Pen in the lead. “We are not afraid of this trial. We are going there with our heads held high with arguments” declared party spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli on Franceinfo on September 30. As for the risk of Marine Le Pen’s ineligibility “we don’t believe it” adds the MP.
What false documents are provided by the RN to defend itself?
To counter suspicions about the fictitious jobs of the RN in the European Parliament, documents supposed to prove the effectiveness of the work of parliamentary assistants were provided by certain members of the party, including Jordan Bardella. The journalist of ReleaseTristan Berteloot, returns to these false documents in an investigative book and argues that “to camouflage this fictitious employment, the current president of the RN helped produce false proof of work”, in particular a “phony agenda” and a “review of press backdated and initialed by his hand”.
The president of the RN is accused of having fictitiously held a job and of having been paid by the European Parliament while he worked for the benefit of the party, but he is not prosecuted in the trial. At the time, he was employed on a part-time fixed-term contract for a monthly salary of 1,200 euros. According to Release, Jordan Bardella was not prosecuted so as to “not add to an already substantial case”.
MEP Nicolas Bay, implicated in the trial which opened on September 30, also provided documents to the courts to prove his effective work as a parliamentarian, as well as that of his assistant at the time, Timothé Toussaint, according to a survey of Franceinfo and Further investigation. The documents raise certain inconsistencies, in particular linked to dates or the highlighting of content and subjects subsequent to the targeted period while the press reviews were presented as elements produced between 2014 and 2015. Nicolas Bay defends himself by assuring having “never claimed to the courts or to anyone else that these documents, in the form provided to the judge, dated from 2014” and maintains that “there is no false proof of work” reports Franceinfo.