The leader of the French extreme right, Marine Le Pensaid this Monday that she felt very calm at the beginning of the process in which she is being tried, along with around thirty members of her party, for embezzlement of Parliament funds when she was an MEP, and insisted that she trusts in Justice and that it is innocent.
“We have a lot of arguments to defend what I believe is parliamentary freedom, which is what is being discussed in this matter”Le Pen said in statements to the press at the entrance to the Paris Correctional Court, in a trial that, if resolved with a conviction, could lead to her disqualification.
She recalled that she and the rest of the accused will have time, during the two months of the trial, to “demonstrate that no rule was violated, that is, no political rule and no rule of the regulations of the European Parliament.”
She insisted that she faces this trial “with great serenity”, in which she is accused of misappropriation of public funds for the use when she was an MEP, like the other defendants, of her parliamentary assistants paid with European funds for activities that had to do with the activity of your party, then National Front and then baptized National Group.
He also emphasized that he trusts “in the Justice of (his) country.” If she were found guilty, she could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison, a fine of one million euros and ten years of disqualification, which would make it impossible for her to run in the next presidential elections, scheduled for 2027.
Bruno Gollnischanother of those who sit with her on the bench, who was also a European deputy and leader of the FN, stated that “this matter should never have come to justice” because with what is being thrown in their face “it could be having prosecuted 500 European deputies.
“From the moment Justice takes care of what the parliamentary assistants do, it controls what the deputies do, and that is against the constitutional principle of the separation of powers”Gollnisch explained.
The one who was in the FN the right hand of Jean-Marie Le Penthe founder of the party and father of Marine Le Pen, denounced that at the origin of this process is the accusation launched by the person who held the position of president of the European Parliament from 2012 to 2017, the German social democrat Martin Schultzand that he did it for political reasons.
It was Schulz who reported in March 2015 to the European Anti-Fraud Agency (OLAF) the improper use of parliamentary assistants employed by the FN, which the investigating judges later estimated cost the European Parliament’s coffers 6.8 million euros.
Patrick Maisonneuvewho is the lawyer for the European Parliament, who has acted as a private prosecutor in the trial, recalled for his part that the instructors concluded “after several years of investigation” that the far-right party had launched “a system that had become widespread” for the improper use of parliamentary assistants.
And that this “system” was controlled “by the leaders of the National Front, now the National Group.”
Maisonneuve stressed that “the funds of the European Parliament are not there to finance national political parties” and that a parliamentary assistant can have a militant activity but “outside working hours” in which they must dedicate themselves “to the deputy to whom they are linked.” by contract.
The trial opened with the reading of the different charges against the accused. The president of the court, Bénédicte de Perthuisreported that both the founder of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and the former MEP Jean-François Jalkhwho also appear as defendants, have been removed from the case due to their state of health.
Le Pen, 96, was examined by a medical tribunal which determined he was unfit to appear. EFE (I)
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