Her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election is in jeopardy. On Monday March 31, the court found Marine Le Pen and eight MEPs guilty of misappropriating public funds in the case of the parliamentary assistants of the Front National (formerly Rassemblement National). It sentenced the former presidential candidate to four years’ imprisonment, two of which were suspended, a fine of 100,000 euros and five years’ ineligibility, to be served immediately. Without waiting for the quantum of her sentence, Marine Le Pen stormed out of the courtroom. Follow our live coverage.
Marine Le Pen “at the heart” of embezzlement. The RN deputy leader, “at the heart of this system since the beginning of 2009”, in which she was “involved with authority and determination”, was also found guilty of complicity in the misappropriation of public funds, according to the court.
Former assistants and the party also convicted. The twelve parliamentary assistants were found guilty of handling stolen goods. The party was also fined €2 million, of which €1 million was firm.
“It won’t weaken us”, says RN vice-president ‘Our voters will be watching this closely, in any case, it won’t weaken us and we’ll be in the fight to win the elections’, said RN vice-president Louis Aliot on TF1 on Monday morning. If Marine Le Pen were prevented from running for president, “it’s no mystery that today Jordan Bardella would be the best placed” to succeed her, he added.
A strategy of “enriching” the party, denounced by the public prosecutor. In their indictment, the two prosecutors listed the elements which, in their view, demonstrated the “enrichment” strategy of the party, “which has financed its propaganda and development to the tune of over 4 million euros with fictitious jobs”, “over more than ten years”, to the detriment of democratic life. The magistrates recalled that the rules governing the role of the European parliamentary assistant have always been the same, dismissing the theory of “political persecution”. This was a response to the line of defense dictated, according to the plaintiff, by Marine Le Pen to her co-defendants, namely that the function of an assistant is “political” and thus serves the party. A firm fine of two million euros has been requested against the RN, which is being prosecuted as a legal entity.
