(Paris) Marine Le Pen expressed her “serenity” on Monday at the opening of her trial and that of 24 other people and the National Rally (RN), suspected of having embezzled funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees .
The trial opened at 1:45 p.m., President Bénédicte de Perthuis starting by ensuring the presence of the defendants at the hearing, two of whom were currently missing. She then began to list the offenses charged against each of the defendants – “a little long and a little tedious but obligatory”, she warned.
Before entering the Paris courtroom, which will host for two months this trial with heavy political stakes for the leader of the French extreme right, she said she was completely “serene”. “We did not violate any rules,” she told the press.
“We have a lot of arguments to develop to defend what appears to me to be the parliamentary freedom which is at issue in this affair,” added the president of the RN group in the Assembly, before entering the room where she is seated in the front row, surrounded by Nicolas Crochet, an accountant also on trial, and Catherine Griset, a very close friend, also accused in the trial.
Nine former MEPs from the National Front (renamed RN) will appear, including Marine Le Pen, Louis Aliot, now vice-president of the RN, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, and the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
Alongside them, 12 people who were their parliamentary assistants and four party collaborators will also be tried in this trial scheduled for three half-days a week until November 27.
The leader of the RN has indicated that she intends to appear as much as possible in front of the judges, but on Tuesday, she could favor the general policy declaration of the new Prime Minister Michel Barnier to the National Assembly.
PHOTO BENOIT TESSIER, REUTERS
Marine Le Pen and her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut
“Not the type of the house”
“Marine Le Pen has chosen to be very present in this trial. Some say “she will hide, she will not come”. No not at all. This is not the style of the house,” assured Sunday on RTL the deputy RN Sébastien Chenu, promising that Mme Le Pen would put forward “a certain number of new elements”.
The case began in 2015 with a report from the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz and concerns numerous parliamentary attaché contracts over a period of more than ten years (2004-2016).
For the prosecution, these “assistants”, struggling to describe their tasks, only had the title. Some had never even met their official employer or set foot in Parliament and, according to the prosecution, only worked for the party – which is prohibited under European regulations.
These include the historic bodyguard of FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, Thierry Légier, his secretary, Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff, Catherine Griset, and even the party’s graphic designer.
The defendants, tried in particular for embezzlement of public funds or complicity in this crime, face a maximum of 10 years of imprisonment and a fine of one million euros and, above all, a ten-year ineligibility sentence likely to hinder ambitions. presidential elections of Marine Le Pen for 2027.
“But there is no reason for her to be declared ineligible since François Bayrou, prosecuted for the same facts, also president of a political party, was acquitted. So what is valid for one should be valid for the other,” Mr. Chenu wants to believe.
Most of the defendants contest as a whole, citing a “pooling” of the work of parliamentary assistants. The RN has been denouncing for years “relentlessness”, even a “political” procedure.
“This case should never have come before the courts […]. Yes, our assistants worked […]they worked with the National Rally and it was perfectly their right,” Mr. Gollnisch commented on BFM.
” System ? »
“We have nothing to reproach ourselves for in this matter,” declared in the Parisian mid-September Marine Le Pen, 56, saying she wanted to explain at the bar that parliamentary assistants are “not employees of the European Parliament” and are “obviously intended, for a certain number of them, to do policy “.
The European Parliament, civil party, estimated its financial damage at three million euros. He will only claim two million, one million having already been reimbursed (which is not an admission of guilt, assured the RN).
The Paris prosecutor’s office mentioned in September 2023 “a real system 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”.
This “system”, validated by Jean-Marie Le Pen and then his daughter, according to the prosecution, would have accelerated with the entry into Parliament in 2014 of 23 FN MEPs (compared to three previously).
Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96 years old, will not appear, an expertise having determined that he was not “in condition” to be judged for health reasons, like former MEP Jean-François Jalkh.