National Rally leader Marine Le Pen and eight MEPs were found guilty of embezzlement of public funds . All elected officials were disqualified, including Le Pen, who left the court after the guilty verdict and before the sentence was read, "visibly exasperated," Le Figaro reports.
Marine Le Pen was sentenced to four years, two of which were unconditional with the possibility of an electronic bracelet. She will not have to serve her sentence in prison. The leader of the Rassemblement National was also declared ineligible for five years . Her lawyer has announced that she will appeal.
Le Pen and the party's MEPs allegedly financed European parliamentary assistants who in reality worked for the party in France between 2004 and 2016 .
The Paris court found the case to have been a €2.9 million fraud for European taxpayers , “by making the EU Parliament pay people who were actually working for the party” at the national level. The twelve former parliamentary assistants present in court were also found guilty of receiving stolen goods.
The candidate for the Elysée in the 2027 presidential elections, where Le Pen had great ambitions (she was leading in the polls in the first round) could thus be Jordan Bardella .
Marine Le Pen and the twelve parliamentary assistants found guilty today by the Paris court signed "fictitious contracts" as part of a real "system" of embezzlement within the Rassemblement National , according to the president of the court, Bénédicte de Perthuis. A system in which the party leader played a "central" role.
"It was established that all these people actually worked for the party, that their deputy (of reference) had not entrusted them with any task and that they passed from one deputy to another", the magistrate specified, adding: "It was not a question of pooling the work of the assistants but rather of pooling the resources of the deputies".
De Perthuis then warned: "Let's be clear: no one is being prosecuted for engaging in politics, that's not the issue. The question is whether the contracts were executed or not ."
(Unioneonline/L)
