Presidential 2022: accused of embezzlement of European public money, the camp Le Pen denounces a montage, the French will not be fooled
Steph Deschamps / April 17, 2022
The Le Pen camp spoke out on Sunday against accusations of embezzlement of European public money targeting their candidate, seven days before the second round of the presidential election.
Marine Le Pen and her family are accused by the European Anti-Fraud Office of having embezzled about 600,000 euros of European public money during their mandates as MEPs, according to a new report submitted in March to the French justice system and revealed Saturday by Mediapart.
It is an office against which we filed a complaint twice and there will be obviously a third complaint, said Sunday the president of the RN Jordan Bardella to Cnews-Europe 1-Les Echos.
The French will not be fooled by the attempts of the European Union and European institutions to interfere in the presidential campaign and harm Marine Le Pen, he said.
The country where the power tries to 'criminalize' opponents by crude montages is called a dictatorship, also reacted on Twitter Philippe Olivier, special adviser of the far right candidate.
Every time she is a candidate, a stink bomb is thrown at her, a few days before the election. This usually comes from elsewhere in the European Union, in one way or another, said on RMC Laurent Jacobelli, spokesman for Marine Le Pen.
Twisted move, lies, verbal violence... I think the Macron team is so feverish that it is ready for anything. The European Union comes to the rescue of its little soldier, he said.
The Olaf report, excerpts of which have been published by Mediapart, concerns the expenses that political groups can use and that Marine Le Pen and those close to her would have used for national political purposes, for personal expenses or for services for commercial companies close to her party, the National Rally and the far-right parliamentary group Europe of Nations and Liberties (ENL).
Olaf implicates Marine Le Pen, three other former MEPs - her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, her former companion Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the RN's national bureau - and the ENL.
According to the report, the candidate personally embezzled about 137,000 euros of public money from the Strasbourg Parliament between 2004 and 2017.
Since June 2017, Marine Le Pen has also been prosecuted in the investigation conducted in Paris on suspicions of fictitious employment in the European Parliament of party assistants. She is under investigation for misappropriation of public funds" and complicity in this crime.