As expected, Marine Le Pen could risk a lot. The prosecution requested, this Wednesday, November 13, five years in prison, including two years subject to change, and a sentence of ineligibility of five years against the three-time candidate for the presidential election, in the case of the assistants parliamentarians of the National Rally, for which she is tried before the Paris court alongside her party and 24 other defendants.
The prosecution requested that this sentence be accompanied by a “provisional execution”, that is to say that it apply immediately, even if they appeal. Such a sentence “would prohibit the defendants from running in future local or national elections”, specified the prosecutor in front of Marine Le Pen seated in the front row of the defendants. But “we are here in a judicial forum and the law applies to everyone”.
Marine Le Pen denounced at the end of the hearing the “violence” and “excess” of these requisitions. “I think that the desire of the prosecution is to deprive the French of the ability to vote for those they want”, and to “ruin the party”, added the boss of RN deputies.
An “organized system” of embezzlement of public funds
“Artificial contracts” of parliamentary assistants in order to “save” money for the National Rally: the prosecution had depicted earlier this Wednesday in its indictment an “organized system” of misappropriation of public funds to the detriment of the European Parliament .
After a month and a half of hearing, the three-time presidential candidate is therefore fixed on the penalties requested by the prosecution against her, her party and 24 other defendants – party executives, ex-MEPs and former parliamentary assistants. “We are not here today because of relentlessness”, nor because of a denunciation “from the European Parliament”, but at the end of “a long judicial investigation”, declared one from the outset. of the two representatives of the prosecution, Louise Neyton. “You will make your decision in view of the documents in the file”, and after “six weeks of hearing” and “particularly extensive debates”, continued the magistrate.
Before the hearing, the leader of the far right had tempered: “This is the normal course of a trial, with today an accusation which accuses, it is not very original either”. “Their only objective is to prevent me from being the candidate of my camp for the presidential election (of 2027). You have to be deaf and blind not to see it,” assured the one who told the court this week last that the penalty of ineligibility that she incurs would have “extremely serious consequences”, such as depriving millions of voters of “their candidate”.