The lawyer for the leader of the National Rally deputies assures that this is not an admission of guilt. Marine Le Pen still claims “to have committed no offense or irregularity in the employment of her two parliamentary assistants”.
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She wants to turn the page. Marine Le Pen agreed to pay nearly 330,000 euros to the European Parliament for the undue employment of two assistants when she was an MEP in order to avoid a “forced execution” of this reimbursement, his lawyer announced Thursday, September 21, confirming information from Mediapart.
After an administrative investigation opened in 2014 into suspicions of embezzlement of European funds by Marine Le Pen, the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) demanded reimbursement of 339,000 euros for the undue employment of two employees. Marine Le Pen, who sat in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2017, was suspected of having employed her chief of staff in the party Catherine Griset and her bodyguard Thierry Légier with European funds for the benefit of the FN (now RN).
“No offense or irregularity”, according to Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen, who disputes the accusations, assuring that Catherine Griset and Thierry Légier had worked with her in Parliament, had refused to pay this sum. According to Mediapart, Parliament’s financial services then deducted from February 2017 50% of her elected official’s allowance and her daily allowances, as well as all of her general expenses.
These samples lasted four months, Marine Le Pen having left Parliament after her election to the National Assembly in June 2017, according to the online media. Threatened since the spring with an enforceable decision to recover 326,401 euros, the leader of the RN finally agreed to pay this sum in July. This payment “does not in any way constitute an explicit or implicit recognition of the claims of the European Parliament”insisted his lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut.
Marine Le Pen reaffirms “not having committed any offense or irregularity in the employment of his two parliamentary assistants, both with regard to the regulations of the European Parliament as well as French law and constitutional principles”, added his counsel. At the same time, Marine Le Pen is indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” And “complicity” since June 2017 in the judicial investigation carried out in Paris on suspicions of fictitious employment of RN MEPs.