According to a media report, the EU’s anti-fraud agency OLAF has accused French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen and several of her confidants of embezzling around €600,000 during her time as an MEP.
French news portal “Mediapart” published on Saturday excerpts from a new OLAF report. Le Pen will face Emmanuel Macron in the second round of presidential elections next Sunday.
Le Pen denies allegations
Le Pen’s lawyer denied the allegations. It was “instrumentalization” just before the second round, said Rodolphe Bosselut of the AFP news agency. Parts of the report are “facts more than ten years old”. Marine Le Pen “has not been summoned by any French judicial authority,” he added. Neither he nor his client received the final report of the investigation started in 2016. Marine Le Pen was questioned in writing in March 2021.
“Mediapart” has published extracts from the new OLAF report on the expenditure of the European Parliament’s political groups within the scope of their members’ mandates. According to this, Le Pen and others would have used the funds for national political purposes, personal expenses or for services of companies related to his party or faction.
Prosecutor’s Office analyzes report
Marine Le Pen, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, her ex-partner Louis Aliot and former far-right deputy Bruno Gollnisch allegedly embezzled around 600,000 euros, which they had to return. According to the report, Le Pen personally embezzled around €137,000 in public funds during his time as a Strasbourg parliamentarian between 2004 and 2017.
The Paris prosecutor confirmed to the AFP news agency that he received the report on March 11 and is currently examining it. Since June 2017, Marine Le Pen has also been under investigation on suspicion of getting bogus jobs for party members as assistants in the European Parliament. She is accused of “embezzlement of public funds” and “complicity” in the context of the judicial investigation.
Marine Le Pen is not the only politician from the former National Front (FN) party, now called the “Rassemblement National”, whom the EU Parliament has accused of false employment. Her father and Gollnisch, among others, are said to have done the same.