YouAn overwhelming burden weighs on the shoulders of the three judges of the eleventh criminal chamber of the Paris court: will Marine Le Pen be able to run in the 2027 presidential elections? Part of the answer is in your hands, after two months of trial of the frontist deputies and their assistants in the European Parliament, accused of having actually worked for the party and thus having embezzled 4.5 million euros between 2004 and 2016.
The prosecution requested, on November 13, against the former president of the National Assembly (RN) a five-year disqualification sentence with provisional execution, that is, applicable immediately, without waiting for the inevitable appeal or cassation trial. Since then, the two prosecutors have been insulted and several petitions have been filed against a “unjust conviction”one of them has already collected more than 25,000 signatures.
Marine Le Pen, her 24 co-defendants and the RN, a legal entity, so to speak, will not be sentenced before spring 2025. Her conviction, however, leaves little doubt: all defense lawyers advocate relaxation, but Marine Le Pen has no illusions. “I have the impression that on many occasions your opinion was already invented”the three-time presidential candidate said in court on November 5. The hearing, which she largely followed, was in fact every day, and against the evidence, peppered with clumsy denials or outright lies.
“Organized nature” of the detours
Written evidence and emails collected over nearly ten years of investigation clearly establish, as the prosecution noted, “organized, optimized and systematic character” embezzlement of funds, for one hundred and forty-six months, which were only interrupted by the Brussels investigation, “at a time when the mechanism was going to give all its power with the 24 new deputies” elected for the 2014 European elections.
There are no fictitious jobs for the assistants, but they really worked, the defense protests. Of course, but for the party. They were not replaced in the National Front when they became parliamentary assistants. And there is no personal enrichment of the accused, the defense maintains. Or even: “people close to the Le Pen family”stressed the prosecutors, including Yann Maréchal, sister of Marine Le Pen, “his faithful secretary and his ambitious young people” have benefited “a completely comfortable lifestyle.” Louis Aliot, the president’s former colleague, received 5,000 euros a month, part-time, for three years.
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