This is a blow that Marine Le Pen would have done well a few days before the debate between two rounds against Emmanuel Macron. The candidate for the presidential election of the National Rally (RN), as well as some of her relatives, is accused by the European anti-fraud office (Olaf) of having embezzled around 600,000 euros of European public money in during their mandate as MEPs. This is indicated by a report unveiled on Saturday April 16 by Mediapart and submitted to French justice.
In addition to Marine Le Pen, the report also pinpoints her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, her former companion Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the national office of the National Rally, as well as the far-right parliamentary group Europe des nations et des libertés ( ENL). The total amount of the sums claimed would amount to exactly 617,379.77 euros. Regarding Marine Le Pen, she is accused of having embezzled 137,000 euros of public money.
His lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, declared on the antenna of BFM TV that this investigation is “not very compliant with the most essential and basic rules of defense law”. “Marine Le Pen disputes it. She disputes without having access to the report, without having access to the indictments. It is an instrumentalization, but unfortunately I am not surprised”, he added. For now, Marine Le Pen “has not been summoned by any French judicial authority whatsoever”, he also specified.