Catherine Griset, who was 14th on the National Rally list in the European elections, was re-elected to the European Parliament. This friend of Marine Le Pen was indicted in 2017.
Catherine Griset was re-elected without difficulty in the European elections on Sunday June 9 with the National Rally list, where she appeared in 14th place. The 51-year-old MEP, who has served in the European Parliament since 2019, is a long-time friend of Marine Le Pen. She was even his sister-in-law, during her marriage to Franck Iorio, the brother of Éric Iorio, who shared the life of the former president of the RN from 2002 to 2006.
Suspicion of fictitious employment
Personal assistant then in charge of Marine Le Pen’s office, Catherine Griset was caught in 2017 in the affair of the parliamentary assistants of the National Front: indicted for “concealment of breach of trust”, she is suspected of having been paid for a fictitious job with Marine Le Pen in the European Parliament between 2010 and 2016, for a total salary of 300,000 euros.
According to elements of the investigation, Catherine Griset was never seen in the European Parliament and would have worked during this period at the headquarters of the RN, in Nanterre. The trial of the case will take place at the end of 2024 but Marine Le Pen indicated in September 2023 that she had reimbursed 330,000 euros to the European Parliament for the salaries of Catherine Griset and her bodyguard.
Flashes on Dailymotion, Student cockade…
In the 2000s, Catherine Griset made a name for herself by hosting news flashes for the National Front on Dailymotion, in which she denounced in particular “European” intrusions into French law: in 2008, for example, she defended the right parents to spank their children.
Elected to the European Parliament since 2019, Catherine Griset chose Luc Lahalle, the former president of the far-right student union La Cocarde, as her parliamentary assistant.