Marine Le Pen and 26 others will be tried for embezzlement of public funds

Marine Le Pen and several other people are accused of having employed collaborators who in reality worked for the National Front with European funds.

The president of the National Rally group in the National Assembly, Marine Le Pen, is referred to the Paris criminal court in the so-called parliamentary assistants case. She and 26 other people will be tried in the fall of 2024 for embezzlement of public funds, suspected of having misappropriated European Union funds to pay assistants to MEPs actually working for the party, according to information from franceinfo confirmed by the Paris prosecutor’s office.

The trial will take place from September 30, 2024 to November 27, 2024, and on the dock will therefore be Marine Le Pen, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, as well as the National Rally party as a legal entity.

Marine Le Pen disputes the facts

“In accordance with the requisitions of the prosecutor’s office of the specialized interregional financial jurisdiction of the Paris prosecutor’s office, 28 people are referred to the trial court, including the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen or Wallerand de Saint-Just”confirms the Paris prosecutor’s office to franceinfo.

At the end of September, the Paris prosecutor’s office requested this trial for the National Rally and 27 people linked to the party, suspected of having participated in a system of embezzlement of European public funds between 2004 and 2016.

Friday, the RN reacted in a press release: Marine Le Pen did not “committed no offense or irregularity”. “We formally contest the accusations made against our MEPs and parliamentary assistants”explains the party, assuring that the trial would give it “finally the opportunity” to defend oneself on the merits “and to put forward (one’s) common sense arguments”.

The list of people targeted by the public prosecutor brings together the vast majority of party figures from the mid-2010s: 11 people having been elected MEPs on National Front lists (since renamed RN), 12 others having been their parliamentary assistants, but also four collaborators of the far-right party.

Damage of almost 7 million euros in eight years

The investigation began in March 2015, after a report from the European Parliament to the French justice system on possible irregularities by the FN concerning salaries paid to parliamentary assistants. The investigations were then entrusted at the end of 2016 to two Parisian financial investigating judges.

After several refusals to appear before the judges, Marine Le Pen was indicted in June 2017 for “breach of trust” And “complicity”prosecutions later reclassified as “embezzlement of public funds”. The European Parliament, the civil party, assessed its damage in 2018 at 6.8 million euros for the years 2009 to 2017.