“It’s a reconstitution of a dissolved league!” Bruno Gollnisch looks delighted this Monday, September 30, in front of the Paris Criminal Court. The former National Front MEP kisses his ex-comrades who came to attend, like him, their trial in the affair of the National Rally parliamentary assistants. Twenty-seven defendants are accused of having misappropriated funds allocated by the European Parliament to pay party employees. The magistrates suspect the representatives of the RN of having “in a concerted and deliberate manner” put in place, between 2004 and 2016, a “system of diversion”, validated by Marine Le Pen, of envelopes (21,000 euros monthly) allocated by the European Union to each MP to pay parliamentary assistants. The European Parliament, which became a civil party, estimated its damage at 6.8 million euros over the periods 2009-2017.
On the second floor of the Court, the courtroom is packed while the Frontist defendants arrive in trickles and crowd into the front row, where Marine Le Pen is already installed, between her friend Catherine Griset, MEP, and Nicolas Hook, party accountant and key man in this affair, whose trial is due to last until November 27. The boss of RN deputies is referred to court for embezzlement and complicity in embezzlement of public property. She faces up to ten years of imprisonment, a fine of 150,000 euros, and, above all, between five and ten years of ineligibility.
Julien Odoul, Louis Aliot, Jean-Marie Le Pen in the dock
At his side, several representatives of the far-right party, such as the former treasurer Wallerand de Saint Just, the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, the deputies Timothée Houssin and Julien Odoul, and even Jean-Marie Le Pen, who will not attend not at trial for health reasons. This Saturday, according to information from Mediapartthe former president of the National Front, always endowed with a certain sense of timing, nevertheless allowed himself to sing the song at his home, surrounded by several neo-Nazi activists. Marine Le Pen, informed by the investigative media, indicated that a complaint would be filed for “abuse of weakness”.
But for now, it’s a completely different matter that she will have to worry about. The member for Pas-de-Calais, who is expected to take the stand on Monday October 14, Tuesday 15 and Wednesday October 16, says she is “serene” and maintains that she has not violated any rules. “We have a lot of arguments to develop to defend what appears to me to be parliamentary freedom which is at issue in this affair,” she briefly declared to the cameras this Monday, before rushing into the room. hearing alongside his lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut. There is no longer any question, however, of denouncing a “political trial”. The expression seems to have been erased, with a little difficulty, from the vocabulary of the Frontist defense. “This is a trial against a political party by a political adversary (in this case, the former socialist president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz)”, tries to argue Alexandre Varaut, close to Marine Le Pen , now a Member of the European Parliament but who worked on the case for a long time as a lawyer.
The role of parliamentary assistants in question
The line of defense was weighed at length by Marine Le Pen and those close to her. The frontists intend to question the line of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), which opened a preliminary investigation in 2016 after being referred to it by the European Parliament, and the definition given by the European Parliament of the role of the parliamentary assistant or opposition MP. “It is completely normal for a parliamentary assistant to carry out functions within the party, it is only a difference in political conception between Germany and us, but in no case is our position reprehensible”, assures a close friend of the boss. Questioned on television sets, party executives, responsible for spreading the good word, cut short, assuring that it is preferable to wait until the end of the trial “to obtain answers”, or cite the trial as an example of MoDem, in which François Bayrou had been acquitted.
Because the deadline is embarrassing, at a time when Marine Le Pen and the RN intend to position themselves as the only recourse and credible opposition to the Barnier government, and executives fear the media repercussions of the trial. “It’s certain that it’s going to take time and energy, and we’re only going to talk about that for a month,” laments a person close to the chef. Marine Le Pen assures that she will try to attend the trial as often as possible, believing that given her role as MEP and unofficial leader of the group, at the time, it is she who has the broadest view of the matter. “I will answer all your questions,” she declared this Monday to the President of the Court. Bruno Gollnisch, for his part, wants to continue to believe in it: despite the two months of trial, the RN will always keep its “head high and its hands clean”. And in the event of conviction? “You will just have to bring me oranges in prison” laughs the fallen heir apparent of Jean-Marie Le Pen.