Judges will soon deliberate on one of France’s most charged corruption cases in recent memory, when two months of court hearings over allegations against Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National end this Wednesday. The far-right party and its leader stand accused of embezzling millions of euros over a twelve-year period through false employment claims for aides to its members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The prosecutors claim that the Rassemblement National unduly appointed party cadres as MEPs’ assistants, thereby securing extra funding for work unrelated to the European Parliament. Le Pen’s defense has dismissed the accusations, claiming they misconstrue the often-overlapping roles — from actual legislative work to campaign activities — that officials take on to ensure the functioning of a modern political party.
This affair first emerged in 2014 when Le Pen — at the time an MEP and president of what was then known as the Front National — was the object of an EU investigation over the fictitious employment of two aides: her bodyguard Thierry Léger and Catherine Griset, who was her chief of staff. Griset, this June elected to her own second term as MEP, received a salary as a parliamentary aide between October 2014 and August 2015, despite spending a total of just twelve hours at the European Parliament. The funds transferred to Griset and Léger were estimated at €340,000 euros, but subsequent EU and French investigations revealed that a far larger web of individuals were involved. The European Parliament — a civil party in the current case — estimates that as much as €6.8 million euros were syphoned off in a scheme implicating over twenty Front National officials between 2004 and 2016. In a June 2014…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
