Marine Le Pen has been accused of using “fake news” during a head-to-head debate with Emmanuel Macron days before the final vote of France’s presidential election.
Ms Le Pen, who has been described by French commentators as adopting “a Donald Trump style” during the televised debate, alluded to allegations that Mr Macron has an offshore account in the Bahamas.
Before the two candidates took part in the virulent exchange watched by 15 million people, an article suggesting Mr Macron was engaging in tax evasion in the Caribbean haven was published on the right wing website Disobedient Media and started to circulate on social media.
Ms Le Pen raised the allegations in the debate and challenged Mr Macron on whether they were true. Asked on BFM TV on Thursday morning if she had any proof to justify repeating the claims, she admitted she did not.
She said she was not formally accusing Mr Macron of any wrongdoing. "Not at all," she said. "If I wanted to do so I would have done it yesterday. I’ve just asked him the question. If I had proof, I would have claimed it yesterday."
Speaking on French radio France Inter, Mr Macron denied the accusations and said he did not have any account in the Bahamas or any other tax haven.
His team said the former investment banker was the victim of a "cyber misinformation campaign", adding they could take legal action.
The original source of the claims remains unclear. There have been various reports citing intelligence sources as saying Russia is targeting Mr Macron in a campaign conducted online. Disobedient Media, which was founded in California by the right-wing journalist William Craddick, attributed the claims to "leaked documents".
Nicolas Vanderbiest, a commentator for radio France Culture, tweeted: “So the fake news story on Macron’s account in the Bahamas, we can say without being misleading, that it was by the Russians.”
French newspaper Le Monde debunked 19 things Ms Le Pen said during the debate that were untrue and two for Mr Macron.
“It appears clear that if Mr Macron was not always [showing] total respect for the facts, Ms Le Pen made a lot of approximations and falsehoods,” writes the newspaper.
An ardent critic of the EU, Ms Le Pen claimed the UK economy was better off since the Brexit referendum.
“The UK economy has never been better off since people decided to take back their liberty,” she said.
The UK economy grew more rapidly than most analysts expected in the wake of last June’s Brexit vote and avoided a recession. However, the pound slumped to a 31-year low against the dollar on the night of the vote and inflation is now shooting upwards to 3 per cent as a result. In the first quarter of 2017 the rate of quarterly UK GDP growth more than halved on the previous three months to just 0.3 per cent amid multiplying signs of previously buoyant UK consumers beginning to flag.
Ms Le Pen also claimed the euro currency was circulating before 1999 and that the EU was costing France €9 billion a year, statements which Le Monde said are both untrue.
