“If it had committed me to anything, I would not have signed”, assures Marine Le Pen

She was heard by a parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign interference, Wednesday, May 24. MP and president of the Rassemblement national group, Marine Le Pen, said: “If that had committed me to anything, I wouldn’t have signed,” about a nine million euro loan with a Russian bank in 2014. “I have no other obligation than to repay this loan, that’s all”, added the chosen one.

“I sign a loan with a bank, I don’t sign a loan with Vladimir Putin”, insisted the former far-right candidate for the presidential election, about this loan contracted in 2014 with the Russian bank First Czech-Russian Bank, suspected of being close to the Kremlin. “In this case, a loan with a French bank is a loan with Emmanuel Macron”, she launched.

Marine Le Pen has always asserted, to defend herself, that this loan was contracted because no French bank had agreed to grant a loan to the party. The National Front (which became the National Rally in 2018) was then seeking to finance the campaign for the 2015 regional elections. “never mentioned the existence of this loan in the conversation” that she had in 2017 with Vladimir Putin, “nor with any political leader” that she met “as and when [ses] displacements”. As a reminder, Marine Le Pen met Vladimir Poutine for the first time in March 2017, a few weeks before the first round of the presidential election.