Paris – Marine Le Pen, eight different former MEPs, 16 different folks and their social gathering Nationwide Rally are being tried from Monday for embezzlement of public funds or complicity on this crime, which they deny.
They’re accused of getting paid the social gathering’s staff with European Union cash supposed to remunerate parliamentary assistants, between 2004 and 2016.
They face a most of ten years in jail and above all a ten-year ineligibility sentence more likely to hinder Marine Le Pen’s presidential ambitions in France for 2027.
For the prosecution, these “assistants”, hard-pressed to explain their duties, had solely the title. Some had by no means met their official employer or set foot within the Strasbourg Parliament and, in keeping with the prosecution, solely labored for the social gathering – which is prohibited underneath European laws.
Many of the defendants contest en masse, citing a “mutualization” of the parliamentary assistants’ work. The RN has been denouncing for years a “relentlessness”, even a “political” process. (September 30, 2024)