Lhe European Parliament intends to “proceed to recover the sums unduly paid” during her mandate as MEP to Marine Le Pen, accused by the European Anti-Fraud Office of embezzlement of public money, announced Sunday to AFP one of its responsible.
“The European Parliament seized Olaf (European anti-fraud office) after discovering some of the irregularities” reproached to the far-right candidate in the French presidential election and to three other former MEPs, a-t- he explains.
“In total we are talking about 617,000 euros unduly paid,” he said. “Now we are going to proceed in the coming weeks to recoveries from the interested parties”.
The case was revealed by the French news site Mediapart. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that it had received Olaf’s report on March 11 incriminating Ms. Le Pen.
The document, of which Mediapart publishes extracts, concerns the fees that political groups can use in the context of their mandate as MEPs and that Marine Le Pen and her relatives would have used for national political purposes, for personal expenses or for services for the benefit of commercial companies close to his party, the National Rally (RN) and the far-right parliamentary group Europe of Nations and Freedoms (ENL).
The other three former MEPs implicated are his father Jean-Marie Le Pen, his former companion Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch, member of the national office of the RN and the ENL.
The office accuses them with Ms. Le Pen of having embezzled around 600,000 euros, which it recommends reimbursement.
According to the report, the candidate of the National Rally would have personally embezzled around 137,000 euros of public money from the Parliament of Strasbourg when she was an MEP between 2004 and 2017.
Olaf’s investigation has been open since 2016 and Ms. Le Pen was questioned by mail in March 2021, her lawyer Me Rodolphe Bosselut told AFP.
Marine Le Pen is campaigning for the second round of the French presidential election, which will take place on April 24. She will face the outgoing president, the centrist Emmanuel Macron.
The candidate has been prosecuted since June 2017 in the investigation carried out in Paris on suspicion of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament of party assistants.
She is indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” and “complicity” in this offense as part of this investigation.
04/17/2022 17:00:57 – Brussels (AFP) – © 2022 AFP
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