(Paris) Marine Le Pen, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the RN and the party leadership of the 2010s, suspected of embezzlement of European funds, will be tried from September 30 to November 27 by the Paris criminal court, announced Wednesday this jurisdiction.
Mme Le Pen and 26 other people as well as the National Rally (RN) as a legal entity are suspected of having set up between 2004 and 2016 a system of remuneration by the European Union for assistants to MEPs who in reality worked for the party.
Marine Le Pen, who has always contested these accusations, will be tried for embezzlement of public funds and complicity.
The court will decide on July 3, after expert opinion, whether Jean-Marie Le Pen, 95, is able to prepare his defense and attend the trial.
“Mr. Le Pen can no longer move around and his faculties are considerably impaired,” his lawyer, Mr. Le Pen, told the court.e François Wagner.
The founder of the National Front, like his daughter, is being prosecuted for embezzlement of public funds and complicity.
PHOTO DANIEL JOUBERT, REUTERS ARCHIVES
Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen
If experts believe that Mr. Le Pen is unable to appear, he should be represented by his daughter Marie-Caroline Le Pen, present at the hearing on Wednesday.
The hearings will take place three afternoons a week, from Monday to Wednesday, said the president of the 11e bedroom.
Among the other defendants are the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, the former number 2 of the party Bruno Gollnisch, the executive vice-president of Reconquête! Nicolas Bay, the former treasurer of the FN Wallerand de Saint-Just or the deputy and spokesperson for the RN Julien Odoul.
In total, 11 people were elected MEPs on National Front lists (since renamed RN), 12 others were their parliamentary assistants, as well as four party collaborators who must be judged.
The investigation began in March 2015, when the European Parliament announced that it had referred possible irregularities committed by the National Front concerning salaries paid to parliamentary assistants to the EU anti-fraud office.
The investigations were then entrusted at the end of 2016 to two Parisian financial investigating judges. Marine Le Pen was indicted in June 2017 for “breach of trust” and “complicity”, charges later reclassified as “embezzlement of public funds”.
The magistrates suspect the RN of having “concertedly and deliberately” set up a “system of embezzlement” of the envelopes (21,000 euros per month) allocated by the European Union to each deputy to pay parliamentary assistants.
The latter would in reality have worked all or part for the RN, thus allowing it substantial salary savings.
The European Parliament, the civil party, assessed its damage in 2018 at 6.8 million euros for the years 2009 to 2017.