Far-right leader found guilty of embezzlement of European funds and immediately barred from running for office
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.
The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.
Le Pen, 56, said before the verdict that that any immediate ban on running for election would be like a “political death sentence” and that judges had “the power of life or death over our movement”. She is likely to immediately appeal against the verdict.
Judges handed Le Pen a five-year ban on running for public office with the added provision that it would take immediate effect. It will apply even if she appeals.
Le Pen, who left the court before the hearing had finished, was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was handed a €100,000 (£84,000) fine. Neither the prison penalty nor fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted.
There was no immediate comment from Le Pen on the ruling. Her right-hand man, RN president Jordan Bardella, said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: It was French democracy that was killed”.
Le Pen and 24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of a vast scheme over many years to embezzle European parliament funds, by using money earmarked for European parliament assistants to instead pay party workers in France.
The so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016, and was unprecedented in scale and duration, causing losses of €4.5m to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the judges found had not been the case.
Le Pen will be able to retain her current post as member of the French parliament for Pas-de-Calais, but will not be able to stand again in a future parliamentary election for the duration of her ban on running for office.
Le Pen has run for French president three times, twice making the final run-off against Emmanuel Macron. Her National Rally party emerged as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 snap parliamentary elections. She had believed she had her greatest chance of winning the Élysée in 2027 on a platform against immigration.
“Le Pen, who left the court before the hearing had finished, was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet.”
Yet another bent politician escapes a real prison sentence, but it appears that Europe have had enough of these far right politicians, especially the pro russian variety.
Embezzlement is just a slightly more polite term for thieving.
She was bankrolled previously by putler cronies to the tune of €millions.
Recently she surprisingly adjusted her putler-rimming to express a form of limited support for Ukraine.
Her successor might be more or less putinoid, who knows?
I don’t think she has changed her spots. This is from Wikipedia.
She has made supportive comments of Vladimir Putin and Russia in the past, advocating closer cooperation before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine; she strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, but stated Russia could become “an ally of France again” if it ends.
Kremlin: This shows France is not a democracy……..OMG.
The banning of the ethnic nationalist Marine Le Pen is solely about stopping the people native to France from exerting their will to survive at the polls. Ethnic Nationalism is the only means by which the existence of native European peoples can be secured in this age of population replacement. The life of the natives is the highest moral cause on European soil. Securing it is not at all in conflict with the struggle of the Ukrainian people to survive Russian expansionism. One genocide is bloody and violent. The other is slow generational and soft. But the outcome will be the same in each case if the natives do not find the means to prevail.
Of course, it is regrettable that the right of the liberal spectrum … the conservative traditionalists and old school nationalists … have not grasped that overlap, and comically expect the monster in the Kremlin to help them in their historical task. But that’s an educational issue. It does not impact the fundamental morality of the natives’ life and right on the soil.
As it is essential to refrain from succumbing to overly nationalistic tendencies, while, concurrently, it is also essential to maintain one’s identity. Massive immigration is akin to self-immolation. It’s just too bad that the nationalists all seem to have been bought by the russian crime syndicate. This makes them even more dangerous than the immigrants they are against.
I wish that Trump would’ve suffered the same fate as any regular citizen when he was convicted and had been sent to prison, where he belongs. At least the system is working in France.