PARIS — French far-right presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen and a slew of fellow National Rally (RN) chiefs face trial from Monday over allegations they embezzled money from the European Parliament with fake jobs.
For Le Pen, the hearings risk overshadowing a record performance in July’s snap parliamentary poll that handed the RN 126 seats — enough to sway Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s shaky minority government.
In the Paris dock are the RN party itself, nine former MEPs including Le Pen and party vice-president Louis Aliot, spokesman Julien Odoul — one of nine former parliamentary assistants — and four RN staff.
First flagged in 2015, the alleged fake jobs system at the RN covers contracts for parliamentary assistants between 2004 and 2016.
Prosecutors say the assistants in fact worked exclusively for the party outside parliament.
Many were unable to describe 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.
“Could I come to Strasburg tomorrow to see how a session works and get to know Mylene Troszczynski who I’m under?” Odoul wrote to Marine Le Pen in 2015 — four months after his contract as a parliamentary assistant to Troszczynski began.
“Yes, of course,” she replied.
The misuse of public funds charges bear maximum penalties including a million-euro ($1.1 million) fine, 10 years’ jail and a 10-year bar from public office — potentially fatal to 56-year-old Marine Le Pen’s hopes of claiming the French presidency on her fourth try in 2027.
The party has for years called the investigation a form of “persecution” and political abuse of the justice system.
“Every time the party or its leaders are attacked, it lets them cast themselves as the victim,” said political scientist Nonna Mayer of Paris’s Sciences Po university.
