The week that was supposed to mark the coronation of the far right in France, as it achieved its dream of finally coming to power, is fast turning into a nightmare: just two days after the unexpected heavy defeat of the National Rally (RN) in Sunday’s legislative elections, where it went from aiming for an absolute majority to coming in third in the National Assembly, the courts announced on Tuesday the opening of a judicial investigation into its leader, Marine Le Pen, on suspicion of irregular financing of her 2022 presidential campaign.
The investigation against Le Pen revolves around alleged “misappropriation of property by persons holding public office,” “fraud against a public entity” and “forgery and use of forgeries,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, without giving details about the origin of these suspicions. The investigation, which has been delegated to an investigating judge, will also seek to clarify whether there was a “loan from a legal entity to a candidate during an election campaign” and, in turn, the “acceptance by a candidate of a loan from a legal entity.”
The judicial investigation, which has only just become known, was opened in the middle of the campaign for the second round of the legislative elections, on July 2, when the RN was still leading in voting intention in all the polls. The decision to open a formal investigation was taken after the financial brigade of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office carried out a preliminary investigation, after receiving a report in 2023 from the National Commission of Campaign Accounts and Political Financing “concerning the financing of Le Pen’s presidential campaign in 2022,” the judicial institution explained.
The Accounts Commission ensures the financial transparency of parties and candidates during campaigns and verifies their expenditure during campaigns to ensure that they have not exceeded legal limits and that the money does not come from irregular sources. Its certification then allows political parties to demand reimbursement of these expenses. On the other hand, if the Commission finds irregularities, it can take legal action, which is the case now for the head of the RN who, two years ago, managed to qualify for the second round of the presidential elections for the second time, only to be defeated by Emmanuel Macron.
Neither Le Pen nor her party have yet commented on an investigation that adds yet another legal burden to a party whose funding – in part through loans from Russia – has been raising suspicions for years.
“Fictitious jobs” system
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But Le Pen has a much more pressing legal problem: at the end of September, she will be tried alongside 24 other members of her party for the embezzlement of European funds between 2004 and 2016. The defendants are suspected of having created during that period a system of “fictitious jobs” to pay people working for the far-right party with EU funds intended to pay parliamentary assistants to MEPs, a structure also misused by other French parties. If found guilty, Le Pen could face a sentence that includes a period of disqualification from holding public office. Although she would most likely appeal in that case, the sentence could be a severe blow to her hopes of running for president again in 2027.
Sunday’s setback, when the RN came third with 143 seats instead of almost winning an absolute majority as polls had indicated at the start of the campaign, is beginning to have repercussions within the party. One day after the candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, admitted his “share of responsibility” for the electoral failure, RN MEP Gilles Pennelle has resigned from his post as director general of the far-right party, according to several French media. A member of the party’s political bureau, Pennelle was considered to be responsible for the “Matignon plan”, the RN plan responsible for planning all the party’s logistics in the event of early general elections such as those that have just taken place. One of the RN’s acknowledged mistakes in the campaign was choosing as candidates several people with a racist, anti-Semitic or conspiracy-theoretic past, as the press revealed especially in the last week of the campaign. Bardella initially spoke of a few “black sheep”, but has ended up acknowledging that the far-right party needs to make more “efforts on the professionalisation of local implementation and, perhaps, the election of certain candidates”.
With its alliance with the split-off president of the Republicans (LR), Eric Ciotti, the RN has managed to significantly increase its strength in the National Assembly, where it has gone from 88 to 143 deputies. A success that has, however, been overshadowed by the deep disappointment of a party that believed it would succeed in placing one of its own in Matignon, the seat of the Prime Minister, for the first time in a democratic way in the history of France.
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