The reports – linked to claims her aides had fake work contracts as EU parliamentary assistants – were published in the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) weekly, which said it had been given access to the results of an investigation by French anti-corruption police.
The party and its leaders were suspected of having set up a “deliberate and concerted system of misappropriation” of EU salaries that were paid to RN party members, the JDD wrote.
Le JDD, organe officiel du pouvoir macroniste, ressort la même sempiternelle affaire des assistants parlementaires, comme à chaque élection.
— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) May 16, 2021
Rien de neuf sous le soleil, sauf peut-être des bons sondages en vue ? MLP https://t.co/MkFLckbIsq
Le Pen, a candidate for the 2022 presidential elections, was quick to hit back – telling French channel BFMTV: “This is the same old case of parliamentary assistants that comes out at each election.”
She later described the JDD as the “official organ of Macronist power”, in reference to President Emmanuel Macron, who defeated her in elections in 2017.
The alleged fraud uncovered by police from the Central Office for Combating Corruption and Financial and Fiscal Offences concerned about 25 elected officials and assistants, including senior party officials, the JDD wrote.
It began when the party, then known as the National Front, was led by Jean-Marie Le Pen – before reaching its “full scope” under the leadership of his daughter.
In 2018, an EU court ruled the bloc could recover 41,000 euros of public funds that Le Pen used to pay her bodyguard who was on a three-month part-time contract as a parliamentary assistant in 2011.
