This is the surprise affair of this between-two-rounds of the presidential election. A European report accuses Marine Le Pen and the National Rally of having misappropriated EU funds for political purposes in France. The candidate herself is accused of having embezzled 135,000 euros. Explanations…
Not a presidential campaign without his stuff. And the 2022 election is no exception. After the so-called McKinsey affair which poisoned Emmanuel Macron’s campaign, now Marine Le Pen is also caught up in a case relating this time to an alleged embezzlement, dating back to when she sat in the European Parliament. The case was publicized in the middle of the between-two-rounds by Mediapartwho had access to a report theEuropean Union Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) sent in mid-March to French justice. The report suspects the RN candidate of having embezzled more than 135,000 euros of public money from the European Parliament when she was a MEP, between 2004 and 2017. The document has been studied since March 11 by the Paris prosecutor’s office. And this analysis could lead to a refund or even criminal prosecution.
What is Marine Le Pen accused of? The Olaf report, according to what Mediapart extracted from it, evokes the use of 136,993.99 euros very precisely, from the funds supposed to help MEPs to assume their mandate expenses. Instead of spending them for her European functions, Marine Le Pen is suspected of having diverted them to finance the political operations of the National Front and then the National Rally in France. In particular, it is a question of 5,000 euros in hotel and travel expenses for 13 activists for a meeting entitled “The regions and Europe facing the financial crisis”. An appointment then organized by the FN which would have actually served as “preparation for the internal election for the presidency of the FN” according to the confessions of one of the participants.
Marine Le Pen is not the only one targeted by this affair, since three other relatives who have sat in the European Parliament, starting with her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, are targeted. The latter is for his part suspected of having embezzled more than 300,000 euros. The former companion of Marine Le Pen, Louis Aliot, and Bruno Gollnisch, a former executive of the FN, are also targeted. The total of misappropriated funds would amount to 617,379.77 euros.
Among these sums, Médiapart mentions 23,100 euros having been used to finance promotional items which “seem to have been bought for the FN congress in Lyon” in 2014, invoices reimbursed for the creation of ghost websites in the names of Marine Le Pen and his father and other “fictional services”. As we regularly read in this type of case, invoices could also be artificially inflated to obtain a more generous reimbursement from the European Parliament and public contracts biased by “false competing offers”.
What does Marine Le Pen say? The candidate of the National Rally for this 2022 presidential election denounced a “thrill”, in the middle of the election. “I obviously absolutely dispute these accusations of which I have not been aware, which poses a problem in terms of the rule of law”, she indicated this week during a trip to Normandy, ensuring that she did not have obtained “no evidence, no element” and this “despite the requests” that she was able to make. “I’m very used to this and I think the French are absolutely not fooled,” she added.
The candidate’s lawyer also spoke, saying he was “dismayed” by the accusation made by Olaf, “without contradictory character” and on “old facts more than ten years old” for some. He also questioned the “always strong timing about the revelation” and its possible “instrumentalization”. Me Rodolphe Bosselut clarified that Marine Le Pen had not been summoned “by any French judicial authority whatsoever” at this stage.