The Paris prosecutor’s office on Monday requested a trial for the RN as well as 27 members or ex-members of the far-right party, in the case of European parliamentary assistants presumed to be fictitious. Among those concerned: Marine Le Pen, her sister Yann Le Pen and their father Jean-Marie, Agence France Presse revealed on Friday. All are suspected of having participated in a system aimed at paying from European funds pseudo-collaborators who in reality worked for the far-right party. The period covered concerns the 2009-2014 and 2014-2019 mandates.
Once the information was known, Marine Le Pen immediately contested “this vision” which seems to him “erroneous work of opposition deputies and their assistants, which is above all political”. In the past, she had already justified her party’s use of these collaborators to “play politics with their MP” at party headquarters, without “doing work for the European Union” – but being paid by it.
The list of people targeted by the public prosecutor is long: 11 MEPs or former MEPs, twelve of their assistants and four collaborators of the far-right party. The vast majority of party figures from the mid-2010s are concerned. But not the former vice-president of the National Front, Florian Philippot, who has since left the RN. He was not indicted in this case, although he is suspected of having produced a false report, revealed by Releaseto demonstrate the activity of one of its collaborators, suspected of fictitious work.
In addition to the two historic leaders of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded it in 1972, and Marine Le Pen, who chaired it between 2011 and 2022, the mayor of Perpignan, Louis, is also threatened with trial. Aliot, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, the former vice-president Nicolas Bay, who has since moved to Eric Zemmour, the former treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just or the former accountant Nicolas Crochet, to the “third party payment” era of almost all MEPs. For the National Rally, taken as a legal entity, the prosecution is requesting a trial for complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds, over the entire period covered.
The penalties incurred are significant: ten years’ imprisonment, and a fine of maximum 1 million euros or double the proceeds of the offense. The prosecution specifies that “the legislator has made compulsory the additional penalty of deprivation of the right to stand for election, for a maximum period of five years, or ten years for an elected person or member of the government”. A major threat for Marine Le Pen, who presented herself on Monday as the “natural candidate” of his camp for the 2027 presidential election. The decision on the actual holding of a trial now rests with the investigating judges, who could issue their order before the end of the year.
“Organized gang fraud”
The case began on March 9, 2015, after a letter of denunciation from the President of the European Parliament at the time, Martin Schultz, to the French Ministry of Justice, on a possible misappropriation of funds paid to FN MEPs for the responsibility of their parliamentary assistants. At the same time, Schultz contacted Olaf, the European Parliament’s anti-fraud body. Its services have just noted that in the new organizational chart of the FN leadership, published a few days earlier, there are “accredited” assistants (supposed to work primarily in Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels) and “local” assistants (attached to the constituency of election of their MEP).
These double registrations then suggest that these people are assigned to tasks other than Parliament, while being paid by it. Especially since some have an employment contract which indicates as the execution address that of the FN headquarters at the time, at 78 rue des Suisses in Nanterre. In parallel with the Olaf procedure, the Paris public prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation, which initially concerned around forty parliamentary assistants, before this number was reduced to around twenty. A judicial investigation was opened on December 15 for “breach of trust”, “organized gang fraud”, “forgery and use of forgery” and “concealed work”.
Since then, Olaf has claimed the sums it considers unduly paid to several MEPs. For Marine Le Pen, it was an amount of 339,946 euros. The sum corresponds to the remuneration of two former parliamentary assistants who, instead of working in Brussels as part of this function, in reality only worked for the FN in France. This is Catherine Griset, close friend and former chief of staff of Marine Le Pen – the investigation file bears his name –and Thierry Légier, for salaries received in 2011 when he was also a bodyguard for the frontist president. According to Mediapart, Marine Le Pen repaid at the end of July the 326,401 euros that she still owed to the European Parliament, which threatened her with forced seizure otherwise. This “this regulation does not in any way constitute an explicit or implicit recognition of the claims of the European Parliament”his lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut told Mediapart.
“A real system”
The investigations were entrusted at the end of 2016 to two Parisian financial investigating judges. After several refusals to appear before them, Marine Le Pen was heard in 2019. She has been indicted since June 2017 for “breach of trust” and “complicity”, proceedings later reclassified as “embezzlement of public funds”. In its 197 pages of requisitions, the Paris prosecutor’s office considers that “there was nothing accidental or one-off about the situations considered” and that’“a real system had been put in place to have the European Parliament bear part of the operating costs of the FN by covering the salaries of a growing number of its employees”.
The public prosecutor puts forward a motive: the party was then “in great financial difficulty”. For the 2014-2019 legislature, Marine Le Pen is accused by former European deputies of having imposed on them very quickly after their election that they make part of their budget available to her, i.e. 21,000 euros monthly, for remuneration of collaborators in order to relieve the finances of the FN. The European Parliament, civil party, estimated its damage at 6.8 million euros.