Marine Le Pen is accused of having developed and participated in a system of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament. The recruitment of several of her parliamentary assistants, all occupying other functions for her or her party, raises questions.
“We didn’t break any rules.” Marine Le Pen set the tone at the opening of the trial targeting her, the National Rally (RN), as well as 24 other people from the party for suspicion of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament, this Monday, September 30. The leader of the far-right party is accused, in the so-called affair of the RN parliamentary assistants, of having misappropriated public funds allocated to MEPs from her political party between 2006 and 2014 to finance the operation of the party and remunerate people who worked for the RN, which was still called National Front (FN) at the time.
Marine Le Pen, who was a European MP between 2004 and 2017, is suspected of being one of the masterminds behind the “concerted and deliberate” establishment of a “system of embezzlement” of public money. According to several elements of the investigation and testimonies, the former boss of the flame party would have herself given the instructions aimed at putting the financial windfall dedicated to RN MEPs for the benefit of the party. But Marine Le Pen is also accused of having hired false parliamentary assistants with her MEP envelope.
The Louis Aliot case: companion, colleague and assistant of Marine Le Pen
Several people recruited as parliamentary assistants to Marine Le Pen between 2004 and 2017 also held other positions with the far-right party, while still others maintained more personal relationships with the former elected official. Some present these two particularities like Louis Aliot, also accused and tried in the affair of the RN parliamentary assistants. The mayor of Perpignan, a member of the flame party since the 1990s, was between 2011 and 2012 Marine Le Pen’s assistant in the European Parliament.
The hiring had caused a lot of ink to flow since at the time, the two politicians were in a relationship and some had denounced a conflict of interest. The European Parliament’s regulations actually specify that the funding allocated to each elected representative cannot be used “to finance contracts allowing the employment (…) of MPs’ spouses or their stable non-marital partners”. To which Marine Le Pen responded that Louis Aliot was neither a “spouse” nor a “stable non-marital partner”. Beyond these very subjective considerations, the man recruited as a “local” assistant saw his contract subject to French law which does not mention the same precision.
Later, when the parliamentary assistant affair broke out, the recruitment of Louis Aliot as a parliamentary assistant was questioned again. It was revealed that while he was Marine Le Pen’s assistant, Louis Aliot also served as campaign director for the RN candidate in the 2012 presidential election. A job which had been presented as volunteering by Marine Le Pen and deemed possible by “the modest hourly duration of [son] parliamentary assistance contract.
A close friend, a bodyguard and a driver
During her mandate as MEP, Marine Le Pen also recruited other personalities from her entourage as parliamentary assistants. Among the latter, we can cite the current MEP Catherine Griset. The chosen one has worked alongside Marine Le Pen for more than 25 years, most often as a personal assistant, but the two women are said to be friends before being colleagues and they were even sisters-in-law for a time.
These professional (and personal?) relationships led Catherine Griset to be a parliamentary assistant to Marine Le Pen for five years between 2010 and 2016. But Catherine Griset is suspected of having benefited from a fictitious job in the European Parliament and of having more or exclusively worked for the party, notably as chief of staff, than for his parliamentary tasks.
The case of Thierry Légier is also questioned in this affair, because the man supposed to be Marine Le Pen’s bodyguard was also one of her parliamentary assistants. Thierry Légier is an almost historical employee of the Le Pen family since he worked for father Jean-Marie from 1992 until 2010, when he became Marine Le Pen’s bodyguard. Even today, he ensures the security of the leader of the RN and that of Jordan Bardella. His services as a bodyguard could have been paid for using funds from the European Parliament, in any case that is what is suspected.
Marine Le Pen would not have only hired the person responsible for her security, but also her driver as a parliamentary assistant: Jean-Claude Surbeck. The hirings and fictitious jobs of Thierry Légier and Jean-Claude Surbeck were mentioned as such before the judges by Charles Van Houtte, also a former parliamentary assistant accused at the trial according to the JDD. These different hires should be addressed during the trial… What will Marine Le Pen’s explanations be on the subject?