Twenty-six people, including the National Rally as a legal entity, are on trial starting Monday for embezzlement of European public funds, complicity and concealment. Penalties of ineligibility are incurred.
She stepped forward to the stand to state her identity. “Marion” Le Pen, known as “Marine”, “born August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine”. This is the first face-to-face meeting between the leader of the deputies of the National Rally (RN) and the president of the 11th chamber of the Paris criminal court, Bénédicte de Perthuis, Monday September 30. The trial of the parliamentary assistants of the National Front (the ancestor of the RN) has just opened and the magistrate is calling the defendants.
In this case, Marine Le Pen is being prosecuted for embezzlement of European public funds as a former MEP and for complicity in the same offense as former president of the far-right party. For this, she faces ten years in prison, a fine of 1 million euros and up to ten years of ineligibility. “I will answer all the questions that the court wants to ask me”is content to ensure, for this first exchange, the triple candidate for the Elysée.
Before the hearing opened, Marine Le Pen made a short statement in front of a forest of microphones and cameras. “I approach this trial with great serenity”she launched, before developing a little more her line of defense and that of the party, referred to justice as a legal entity for complicity and concealment of embezzlement of public funds: “We have not violated any political or regulatory rules of the European Parliament. You will hear all our extremely serious arguments.” The MP, surrounded by her lawyers, then cut short the journalists’ questions: “I’m not going to do the trial with you in the hallway.”
Justice accuses the party, its executives, elected officials and small hands of having “in a concerted and deliberate manner” established and maintained a “diversion system”between 2004 and 2016, envelopes of 21,000 euros allocated each month by Europe to each MP to pay parliamentary assistants. The latter actually worked, according to the prosecution, for the National Front. The European Parliament, civil party, assessed its damage at 3 million euros – compared to 6.8 million initially. And Marine Le Pen is presented by the investigating judges as “one of the main culprits” of this system.
His father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was also referred to justice. But the court decided to sever his case due to his state of health. According to expert findings presented at a preliminary hearing in July, the 96-year-old former flame party president and MEP is not “in condition” to be judged because of“a profound deterioration of his physical and psychological capacities”. The same goes for former MEP Jean-François Jalkh, 67, whose state of health has deteriorated since a stroke.
These are therefore 26 defendants – and not 28 – who were called by the president to be briefly reminded of the charges against them. In addition to a few absentees, including the former Frontist MEPs Marie-Christine Boutonnet and Dominique Bilde and the mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot, elected and former elected officials, as well as their ex-parliamentary assistants and the accountants and treasurers of the party at the time paraded at the bar. Among them, the current MEP Nicolas Bay and his former parliamentary assistant Timothée Houssin, now RN deputy for Eure. Or the Yonne MP Julien Odoul, prosecuted for having been hired as a parliamentary assistant to the former MEP Mylène Troszczynski when in reality, according to the prosecution, he was a special advisor in Marine Le Pen’s cabinet.
The four former European parliamentary assistants of Marine Le Pen also responded, namely the current RN MEP Catherine Griset, Thierry Légier, the historic bodyguard of Jean-Marie Le Pen, Guillaume L’Huillier and Micheline Bruna, who also worked for the former honorary president of the party at the material time, as director and chief of staff respectively. Micheline Bruna is also appearing for having been the parliamentary assistant to another historic figure of the party, the former MEP Bruno Gollnischwho took his place on Monday in the dock.
On the side of those who held the purse strings during the period of the alleged events, were called by the president the Belgian Charles Van Houtte Belge, ex-accountant of the FN, kingpin of the party in the European Parliament, and Wallerand de Saint- Just, former party treasurer. Among the incriminating evidence seized during searches are compromising exchanges between the latter and Marine Le Pen. “We will only get out of this if we make significant savings thanks to the European Parliament and if we obtain additional payments”he wrote to her in June 2014.
The former accountant Nicolas Crochet, close to Marine Le Pen, for his part was reminded of his alleged role in the “centralized system for managing expense envelopes” Frontist MEPs “by being responsible, in particular, for drafting employment contracts and salary slips for parliamentary assistants”.
Finally, Jean-Paul Garraud, former magistrate and current MEP, came forward to represent the National Rally at this hearing. The stakes are high for the party, which fears a heavy fine, which would threaten the timetable of its debt reduction plan. Since the start of this affair, the spokespersons of the FN/RN have denounced a “relentlessly”or even a procedure “policy”.
From this first day of hearing, Marine Le Pen and her co-defendants thus drew a line of defense different from that of the MoDem, judged for facts of the same nature at the end of 2023. While the former centrist parliamentary assistants had defended themselves by ensuring having indeed carried out work for their MEPs, the executives of the far-right party claim the freedom to employ these assistants for political activities for the benefit of the party. “It’s parliamentary freedom. Our assistants have worked. Nobody questions it. The subject is what is the nature of the work”Marine Le Pen told journalists on the sidelines of a hearing suspension. The MP, a former lawyer by profession, is counting on “come back regularly” in this courtroom to defend yourself: “The feeling of injustice is less strong being here.” The trial is expected to last two months.