Jordan Bardella is suspected of having held a fictitious job as a parliamentary assistant for the RN in the European Parliament and of having provided false documents as evidence. However, he will not be tried at the trial scheduled for the end of September.
Although he is not among the accused in the trial of the RN parliamentary assistants case, scheduled to open on September 30, 2024, Jordan Bardella is still involved in this vast story. The current president of the National Rally (RN) was the parliamentary assistant to former MEP Jean-François Jalkh for a few months in 2015. However, since the facts judged during the trial span from 2004 to 2016, the politician is among those suspected of having participated in a fraudulent system of fictitious jobs. Marine Le Pen’s protégé could thus have spent his contract as a parliamentary assistant working more for and for the benefit of the RN, which was called the National Front at the time, than working on parliamentary work.
Like most of the people implicated in this case, Jordan Bardella denies these accusations. To defend himself, the politician provided the courts with documents supposedly attesting to the effectiveness of his work in the European Parliament. However, according to an investigation by the journalist Release Tristan Berteloot, these documents would be fake and backdated. “To camouflage this fictitious employment, the current president of the RN helped to produce false proof of work” writes the journalist in his investigative book Winning machine listing as examples a “fake diary” and a “backdated press review initialed by his hand”. The journalist claims that a Belgian lawyer employed by the RN asked a party intern to produce false documents to cover for the president of the far-right party. A version of events reinforced by statements from former interns and party members.
Jordan Bardella was not the only one to produce false documents to justify his parliamentary work and deny the accusations. MEP Nicolas Bay, who sat in the RN at the time of the events, and Timothée Houssin who was his parliamentary assistant are said to have provided similar documents according to information from Franceinfo and teams of Further investigationthe emission of France 2. Press reviews supposedly dated 2014 or 2015 would present elements later than these dates according to the observations of the journalists.
Jordan Bardella’s defense raises questions
The RN president denounced “false and defamatory” accusations after the publication of the investigation Release and intends to file a complaint against Tristan Berteloot. “Neither the European Parliament nor the French Justice system had found fault with the reality of my work,” added Jordan Bardella in a message on X. While these new revelations come in the fortnight preceding the trial of the RN parliamentary assistants’ affairs, he points out a “slightly crude” ploy.
Jordan Bardella was able to benefit from the support of his party which in a press release assures that its leader “worked [en tant qu’assistant parlementaire] without any infraction or irregularity, both with regard to the regulations of the European Parliament and French law”. The political party adds that “no supporting documents were requested and a fortiori submitted to the courts” concerning the case of Jordan Bardella. Logical since the politician should not be judged during the trial. All that remains is to prepare his defense, the president of the RN could have produced documents questioning the effectiveness of his work and put himself in a difficult position all by himself. At least according to the elements revealed by Release.
Having worked as an assistant under a part-time fixed-term contract and for only a few months, Jordan Bardella would only represent a loss of around €10,400 in the event of proven fictitious employment. An anecdotal amount compared to the €6.8 million embezzled according to the European Parliament. The politician was therefore not prosecuted in order “not to add to an already substantial case” according to Libération.