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Trial of RN parliamentary assistants: Marine Le Pen in the dock
This is the image of the day: Marine Le Pen in court in the dock. She is being tried with 24 other former MEPs, collaborators and officials of the FN which became RN. The European Parliament’s fictitious jobs trial opened on Monday 30 September.
(France 2)
This is the image of the day: Marine Le Pen in court in the dock. She is being tried with 24 other former MEPs, collaborators and officials of the FN which became RN. The European Parliament’s fictitious jobs trial opened on Monday 30 September.
Monday September 30 marks the first day of the trial of Marine Le Pen and 24 other members or ex-members of her party. “I approach this trial with great serenity, we have a lot of arguments to develop to defend what appears to me to be parliamentary freedom.”, declares Marine Le Pen.
Justice accuses the National Front (now National Rally) of having organized between 2004 and 2016 a system of embezzlement of money from the European Parliament. The amount of the damage amounts to at least three million euros, a third of which has been reimbursed. This money, intended for parliamentarians, would have financed the employment of parliamentary assistants dedicated to other missions.
Today, at the hearing, some defendants assert that these jobs were not fictitious: “All our assistants worked, they worked for our political formation.”, explains a relative of Marine Le Pen. She herself faces 10 years in prison and a million euros fine as well as 10 years of ineligibility. Could this hinder his candidacy for the presidential election in 2027? Not sure, because only a conviction with immediate execution could prevent him from doing so, a decision rarely taken by the courts.
Watch the entire reporting in the video above