Trial of Le Pen and far-right allies over EU embezzlement enters its first day

The trial of far-right leader Marine Le Pen and 26 other senior members of the National Front, accused of using fake jobs to embezzle EU funds from the European Parliament, began in a packed courtroom on Monday, with a sea of cameras waiting for the far-right leader outside.

"I approach this trial with great calm. We have many arguments to develop to defend parliamentary freedom. [...] We have violated no rule, no political rule, and no regulatory rule," said Le Pen before entering the courtroom.

Prosecutors suspect the far-right party of having "deliberately and concertedly" set up between 2004 and 2016 a "system of embezzlement" of funds allocated by the EU to MEPs from the former iteration of the Rassemblement National, the Front National, to pay their parliamentary assistants.

These assistants allegedly worked fully or partially for the party instead, allowing it to save on salaries at a time when the far-right party was short on funds. The European Parliament, which filed a civil lawsuit, eventually assessed the damages at €3 million.

On the first day of this marathon trial, which is expected to last two months, the defendants stood before the court to hear the charges read out against them.

These include "embezzlement of public funds" and "receiving embezzled public funds", for which the co-defendants face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, a €1 million fine and 10 years of being barred from running for political office, which could hamper Le Pen's potential 2027 presidential bid.

Sitting in the front row, Le Pen was surrounded by some loyal supporters, including former accountant Nicolas Crochet and Catherine Griset, an MEP since 2019.

Also present were the party's former number two, Bruno Gollnisch, and MEP Nicolas Bay, a former RN member who was elected in the last European elections on the Reconquête list before leaving the movement of controversial figure Eric Zemmour.

The upcoming hearings are expected to shed light on the far-right party's finances and the salaries of some of its officials. One man is expected to be in the spotlight: Belgian Charles Van Houtte, former administrator of the Europe of Nations and Freedom group, at the heart of the French far-right party's machinery in the European Parliament.

Van Houtte is believed to be the author of a kind of MEP assistants' list, which allegedly managed available funds and allocated assistants to different MEPs and was first mentioned by AFP in 2017.

The accountant, who was also once Marine Le Pen's parliamentary assistant, was dismissed from the Europe of Nations and Freedom group in 2017. He sat alone in the fourth row of defendants.

Due to their fragile state of health, the court has formally ordered the separation of the cases of 96-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen and former MEP Jean-François Jalkh, as, according to the court, neither is able to be present or prepare their defence.

In a video published by Mediapart and filmed on Saturday, Jean-Marie Le Pen appears with musicians from the Lyon-based neo-Nazi rock band Match Retour.

His daughter, Marine Le Pen, confirmed that she would be filing a complaint against the band members for "abuse of weakness", claiming that the musicians had taken advantage of the family patriarch's health to perform alongside him.

(Laurent Geslin | Euractiv.fr)