A week before the second round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen finds herself again accused of embezzlement of European public funds. After his indictment in 2018 for the same facts in the file of her European parliamentary assistants, the candidate of the National Rally is today targeted by a second report from the Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) of the European Union, revealed on Saturday April 16 by Mediapart (article reserved for subscribers).
At stake this time: nearly 137,000 euros which would have been embezzled for personal use by the finalist in the presidential election when she sat in Strasbourg between 2004 and 2017. In total, the party is accused of having embezzled 617 000 euros, adding the sums involving three other former RN MEPs, according to Mediapart, which published screenshots of several extracts from the report.
1What does the Olaf report reproach Marine Le Pen for?
In this 116-page document, the European Union Anti-Fraud Office requests reimbursement by the candidate of the RN, on a personal basis, of 136,993.99 euros, “corresponding to various embezzlement charged by the anti-fraud body to the candidate”according to Mediapart.
In the viewfinder of this report are also three other former European deputies of the National Rally: Jean-Marie Le Pen, Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch. The amount of the sums claimed amounts, in total, to more than 617,000 euros, according to Olaf.
L’Olaf’s investigation also accuses the candidate and her former MEP colleagues of a series of conflicts of interest. Mediapart reports thatMany times, the budget allocated by Europe to the party was used to make donations to associations where relatives or members of the national rally.
2What do the sums claimed by Olaf correspond to in concrete terms?
According to Mediapart, Olaf accuses Marine Le Pen and the three former MEPs of having misappropriated European public funds for national political purposes. Among the most concrete examples, we find, in the report, more than 23,000 euros worth of promotional items delivered to the party’s headquarters, which “seem to have been bought for the FN congress in Lyon”in 2014. The investigative site also mentions more than 4,100 euros worth of bottles of Beaujolais distributed by Bruno Gollnisch at the same congress.
3When was the French justice informed of this?
Asked by AFP, the Paris prosecutor’s office replied that it had received this report on March 11, confirming the information from Mediapart. According to the news site, Olaf indicates in its report that the facts uncovered “are liable to give rise to criminal proceedings against former Members (…) for the fraudulent acts they have committed to the detriment of the Union’s budget”. Several offenses likely to be retained by justice are cited: “fraud”, “false”, “breach of trust” or “embezzlement of public funds”according to Mediapart.
4How did Marine Le Pen and her supporters react?
If Marine Le Pen has still not spoken on this affair, the reactions of her supporters have multiplied. Guest on franceinfo, Sunday April 17, Louis Aliot, directly targeted in this case, was indignant: “Olaf and Mediapart are outside the law and I hope that we will take legal action to find out where the leaks come from and how the investigation is done because we don’t know anything about it”, launched the RN mayor of Perpignan.
The former MEP, who “formally contests what is in the article”, claims to have instructed his lawyer to find out “How is it possible that today, in investigations like this, the media like Mediapart are better informed than us and that we do not have access to the file to know what we are accused of”.
On RMC, also on Sunday morning, Laurent Jacobelli, spokesman for Marine Le Pen, castigated the coincidence of these revelations with the presidential calendar. “Each time she is a candidate, a stink ball is thrown out to her, a few days before the election. This usually comes from elsewhere in the European Union, in one way or another.”
A feeling shared on Europe 1 by Jordan Bardella, the acting president of the National Rally. “Two days before the second round, it’s weird!” he criticized. Before adding that his party intended to file a complaint: “It is an office against which we have filed a complaint twice and which will be the subject of a new complaint, but the opening of an investigation a few days before the second round will not leave anyone unmoved.”
5In what context does this case arise?
This is not the first time that the far-right candidate has been targeted for the use of her European public funds. In 2018, the former MEP RN was indeed indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” in the so-called case of European parliamentary assistants. Marine Le Pen, who has repeatedly refused to appear in court, is suspected of having employed collaborators paid by European public money to work on behalf of her party. At the time, Mediapart had revealed that a first report from Olaf had already claimed in 2016 the reimbursement of 339,000 euros of public funds.