Has the RN become a party like the others?

Justice suspects the far-right party of having used fictitious jobs in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2016. A case which undermines the image of integrity that the National Rally wants to give itself.

Marine Le Pen is expected in court on Monday September 30. Accused of “embezzlement of public funds”she will be tried for two months with 24 other defendants, elected officials or party employees, in the context of the affair of the fictitious assistants of the RN.

This time, it is certain, the Lepenist party has indeed changed! We often doubt the effects of the famous tactic of “demonization” of Marine Le Pen, of her desire to trivialize the RN, to transform it into a party like the others. Well, from a legal perspective, it’s a success! In this area at least, the daughter has indeed broken with the father’s inheritance. She buried the slogan “Heads up, hands clean!” brandished by Jean-Marie Le Pen for decades. From now on, the RN is a “ripou” party like the others, to use the term it has long attached to its adversaries. And even more than the others… in view of the very heavy accusations weighing on Marine Le Pen and her numerous accomplices.

Seven million euros is the total sum that the far-right party is suspected of having misappropriated from 2004 to 2016 to the detriment of the European Parliament. Seven million taken from the pocket of the taxpayer, and therefore the voter, to fraudulently pay RN employees. Even the historic bodyguard of the Le Pen, Thierry Légier, or a sister of Marine Le Pen, Yann, the mother of Marion Maréchal, passed them off as assistants to the European Parliament, where they never set foot . Europe is one of the RN’s favorite targets and it is therefore also a pot of money that has allowed the Lepenist party to enrich itself. As a result, Marine Le Pen risks up to five years of ineligibility.

She refutes these accusations and says that all other parties do the same. She didn’t do anything and everyone does it, it’s a pretty contradictory defense. It is true that a procedure of the same type is open against France Insoumise and that François Bayrou was acquitted at first instance, giving the MoDem the benefit of the doubt. The difference is firstly the scale of the sums embezzled, but also the centralization of a financing system, which seems to have been put in place by Marine Le Pen herself. “Marine knows all that…”, responded, for example, in writing, the party treasurer to an elected official worried about the illegality of this financing. In defense, Marine Le Pen will of course denounce a “political trial”, but she, who spends her time denouncing the so-called “laxity” of justice, has never had such a desire to benefit from it.