Paris Prosecutor A week before the second round of the French presidential election, presidential candidate Marine Le Pen launched an embezzlement investigation.
The prosecutor’s office received a report EU Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) The Paris Prosecutor’s Office informed the DPA news agency on March 11 that the charges against Le Pen are being investigated.
Part of the report was published this Saturday by the research portal. middle section and in it the far-right leader is accused of embezzling around 137,000 euros in EU funds when he was an MEP between 2004 and 2017.
a lawyer from Le Pen, Rodolphe BosselutIn statements to Mediapart, he denied the accusation and warned that Le Pen reserves the right to take legal action against former aides or service providers who may have embezzled money without his knowledge.
Bosselut also underlined that OLAF is not an independent institution and criticized the recent leak of this information. One week before the vote on April 24.
The report includes three other former MPs from Le Pen’s National Rally party, the former Front National: Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen; Le Pen’s ex-partner Louis Aliotand the former vice-president of the party, Bruno Gollnisch. In total, they would embezzle 486,000 euros paid to suppliers close to the far-right party.
Aliot, current mayor of the city perpignanHe also denied the accusations in a statement to FranceInfo television this Sunday.
This is not the first time a possible embezzlement has been reported. It has been noted on previous occasions that assistants to the National Union’s deputies were actually paid by the European Parliament when Le Pen was serving for his own party.