PARIS (AP) — Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny abruptly entered France’s tight-knit presidential campaign on Wednesday, urging voters to back incumbent Emmanuel Macron and claiming that far-right challenger Marine Le Pen was too closely linked to Russia.
Le Pen was previously under scrutiny over a €9 million ($9.7 million) loan her party received from the First Czech-Russian Bank in 2014.
Questions about Le Pen’s ties to Moscow surfaced during her presidential bid five years ago, which she lost to Macron, and have surfaced again during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. She reiterated during a debate between the two candidates on Wednesday night that the February 24 Russian invasion was “inadmissible”.
The tweet from Navalny’s team, hours before the critical debate, threatened Le Pen’s relatively smooth path to Sunday’s runoff against Macron.
During the debate, Macron attacked Le Pen as dependent on Russia.
“You talk to your banker when you talk about Russia, that’s the problem, Madame Le Pen,” Macron said.
Le Pen balked at claims that she was indebted to the Kremlin, saying she was a “completely free woman”.
Earlier in the campaign, she dismissed questions about the loan to her National Front party, which was renamed the National Rally. The bank has since been dissolved.
Navalny, Putin’s main domestic enemy, said in the lengthy Twitter thread in French that he wanted to tell Le Pen’s supporters about corruption in Russia and how it has affected banks like the FCRB.
“This bank is a well-known money laundering agency established at the instigation of Putin,” Navalny tweeted, although he cited no evidence other than his own investigation into corruption in Russia. “That sells political influence to Putin.”
In an unusual appeal that reflected the power of his faith but could itself be construed as interference, Navalny said: “Without hesitation, I urge the French to vote for Emmanuel Macron.”
A 2019 study by the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund found that FCRB Bank was a “key wheel in Moscow’s attempt to run political competitions abroad — and how that bank sought to capitalize on existing campaign funding gaps politically.” Achieve goals.”
Le Pen’s anti-immigration party was the focus of the study, saying the bank had complicity in being a “vehicle for large-scale money laundering by corrupt elites”. It also cited “Russian state-sanctioned interference in the Western political system” in the form of the National Front loan.
Le Pen reiterated during the debate with Macron that her party went to the FCRB after French and European banks refused to lend him money. The credit has dogged the far-right party for years, along with its ties to Putin. A photo of the two meeting in 2017 was posted by their opponents on social media during the campaign.
Le Pen countered Macron’s insinuations of their dependence on Russia and pointed the finger at him.
“You received Mr. Putin with great fanfare at Versailles… You received Mr. Putin at Bregancon, your vacation spot,” and told him what she said about Russia needing to realign with Europe, she said. Le Pen has said she wants rapprochement with Russia once the Ukraine war is over.
At a press conference ahead of Navalny’s tweets, Le Pen again defended himself against suspicion of being indebted to the Kremlin. She told reporters earlier this month that she doesn’t believe the FCRB is under the orders of Russian leaders.
She added that her party is still paying off the loan without clarifying who the creditors are.
She said the loan wasn’t a love affair.
“This loan did not come with a friendly rate of interest. It was signed with 6%,” she said.
“I am of course available to any bank, American, from South America, that wants to take on this loan,” she said.
In a dig at the French bank, she added: “If a French bank wants to buy this loan, then of course on the same terms, very advantageous terms for the bank.”
French law now prohibits lending to political parties from countries outside the European Union. Le Pen’s national rally party has taken out a loan from a bank in Hungary, led by Viktor Orban, a Le Pen ally.
Navalny was sentenced last month to nine years in prison for fraud and contempt for charges, in addition to a two-and-a-half-year sentence for politically motivated convictions. The 45-year-old activist, who is being held in a penal colony east of Moscow, survived a nerve agent poisoning in 2020 that he blames on the Kremlin.
Over the past year, Putin has cracked down on opposition figures like Navalny, along with his supporters, other activists and independent journalists, to quash any dissent.
Navalny’s team has stepped up efforts to put international pressure on Putin, speaking before EU meetings and calling for sanctions against Moscow.
Russia has fascinated the Le Pen family for generations, beginning with Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father and co-founder of the old Front National. Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Marechal, a far-right politician, has visited Russia, and Marine Le Pen has visited Russia several times but only met with Putin once.
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Associated Press writers John Leicester and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.