The trial will begin after the European elections. Marine Le Pen, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the RN and the party leadership of the 2010s, suspected of embezzlement of European funds, will be tried from September 30 to November 27 by the Paris Criminal Court, announced this Wednesday 27 March this jurisdiction.
Marine Le Pen and 26 other people as well as the National Rally as a legal entity are suspected of having set up between 2004 and 2016 a system of remuneration by the European Union for assistants to MEPs who actually worked for the party .
Marine Le Pen, who has always contested any offense in this case, will be tried for embezzlement of public funds and complicity. His father, co-founder in 1972 of the flame party, will also be on the dock alongside the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, the executive vice-president of Reconquête! Nicolas Bay, and the former treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just or the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
The court will decide on July 3, after expert opinion, whether Jean-Marie Le Pen, 95, is able to prepare his defense and attend the trial. “Mr. Le Pen can no longer move around and his faculties are considerably impaired,” his lawyer, Me François Wagner, told the court. If experts believe that Jean-Marie Le Pen is unable to appear, he should be represented by his daughter Marie-Caroline Le Pen, present at the hearing on Wednesday. The hearings will take place three afternoons a week, from Monday to Wednesday, said the president of the 11th chamber.