By Henry Samuel
Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron’s main rival, Marine Le Pen faces a possible 10 years in prison as she goes on trial alongside dozens of members of her party over an alleged “fake jobs” scheme that took money from the European Union (EU) and channelled it into her far-right party.
The National Rally (RN) leader, 24 members and the party itself stand accused of using funds for EU parliamentary work to pay staff who were working for the party, known as the National Front at the time.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen speaks to the media as she arrives at the courthouse in Paris on Monday. The trial is expected to last two months.Credit: AP
In the Paris dock were nine former European Parliament members (MEPs) including Le Pen and Louis Aliot, the party vice-president, Julien Odoul, a party spokesman and one of nine former parliamentary assistants, and four RN staff.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, 96, Le Pen’s father and co-founder of the National Front, is being tried in absentia due to his waning mental and physical health.
As she arrived at court, Le Pen, who will plead not guilty alongside her colleagues, said: “We have not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament”.
As well as a maximum 10-year prison term and €1 million ($1.6 million) fine, the misuse of public funds carries a potential five-year ban from public office, which could torpedo her hopes of claiming the French presidency at her fourth attempt in 2027.
The two-month trial, which Le Pen has blasted as politically motivated, has threatened to cast a shadow over the party’s record victory in the July snap election, when it won 126 seats and claimed a kingmaker role over new Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s fragile minority government.
Marine Le Pen leaves the courthouse after the first day of trial.Credit: AP
MEPs are allocated funds to cover parliamentary expenses, including salaries for their assistants.
The RN’s alleged fake jobs system, which was first flagged in 2015, allegedly involved workers being paid and listed as assistants while carrying out unrelated roles within the National Front.
Prosecutors claim the assistants worked exclusively for the party outside parliament under a “system of fraud managed by successive leaders” that saw almost €7 million in EU funds misappropriated.
The trial covers a period in which €3.2 million was allegedly embezzled, a third of which has already been “reimbursed”, notably by withholding MEP’s salaries to claw back the funds.
Many of the RN “assistants” were allegedly incapable of describing their day-to-day work and some never met their supposed MEP boss or set foot in the parliament building.
A bodyguard, secretary, Le Pen’s chief of staff and a graphic designer were all allegedly hired under false pretences.
“Isn’t it a bit risky that Marine takes me on for her?” Yann Le Pen, Marine’s older sister, asked in an email in 2012.
She later told investigators she had never set foot in the European Parliament or “worked on a European political dossier”.
“I don’t have the skills and it was never asked of me,” she conceded. She’s understood to have been paid as a parliamentary assistant.
Four months after his parliamentary assistant contract began in 2015, Odoul asked Le Pen: “Could I come to Strasbourg tomorrow to see how a session works and get to know Mylene Troszczynski who I’m under?”
“Yes, of course,” she replied. According to Le Canard Enchaîné, he had two phone calls with Troszczynski in two years.
Several people have testified about a 2014 meeting that one said discussed a clear “fake jobs” structure.
One message from Wallerand de Saint-Just, the party treasurer, warned about its disastrous finances – at one point, it was €20 million in debt – writing: “We won’t get out of this without making significant savings thanks to the European Parliament”.
In 2014, Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, another former National Front MEP, expressed his concern to the party treasurer in explicit terms. “What Marine is asking us to do is the equivalent of us signing up for fictitious jobs ... we’re going to get caught out,” he said.
“I think Marine is fully aware of this,” came the reply.
Last week, Laurent Jacobelli, an MP in France and party spokesman, insisted that Le Pen was not worried about the trial.
“She knows that what we are accused of is having a different understanding, as a French party, of what an assistant role is, compared with the European Parliament’s understanding,” he told Reuters.
Her entourage pointed to the recent acquittal of François Bayrou, the leader of the French centrist MoDem party, in a similar case.
Eight people, including five former MEPs, as well as the MoDem party itself, received suspended prison sentences and a ban from holding public office.
Judges afforded Bayrou “the benefit of the doubt” that he was not the “principal decision-maker” in a “fraudulent system” involving parliamentary assistants.
Prosecutors in the current trial argue that there is ample evidence that Le Pen was indeed the main decision-maker.
Analysts differ over whether the trial will have any lasting negative effects on a party with the wind in its sails after the July snap election.
The current Barnier government could be toppled at any moment if the Left NFP alliance and the RN join forces in a confidence vote, once again putting Le Pen in a kingmaker role.
“Every time the party or its leaders are attacked, it lets them cast themselves as the victim,” Nonna Mayer, a political scientist at Paris’ Sciences Po university, told AFP.
But Brice Teinturier, the deputy director general of the Ipsos institute, said that it could be harmful to a party seeking to bolster its credibility.
“Of course, part of the RN’s voter base will be galvanised by the trial. But [a trial] is never a good thing, [such support] can only limit the negative effects,” he told Le Monde.
“A trial doesn’t have an immediate and powerful effect, but it creates a negative halo that always ends up causing damage.”
The Telegraph, London