Marine Le Pen, the de facto leader of France’s far-right National Rally (R.N.) party, was convicted on March 31 of embezzling over €4 million in European Parliament funds between 2004 and 2016.  The ruling, delivered by presiding judge Bénédicte de Perthuis in a Paris court, imposes a five-year ban from public office — effective immediately — along with a four-year prison sentence (two years under house arrest with an electronic tag and two years suspended) and a €100,000 fine (approximately USD 105,000).  The verdict threatens to derail Le Pen’s political ambitions, including her anticipated run in the 2027 French presidential election, where she would most likely be a frontrunner to succeed Emmanuel Macron.  Le Pen has vowed to appeal, but the process could extend beyond the 2027 election timeline.

The charges stem from what is being called a “fake jobs system” in which Le Pen and 24 co-defendants — including eight former EU lawmakers and 12 parliamentary assistants — allegedly misused funds allocated for European Parliament assistants.  The court found that these assistants, paid with E.U. money, performed little to no work for the Parliament and instead served R.N. party roles in France.

The court found evidence of a deliberate system allegedly orchestrated by Le Pen to reduce the party’s operational costs, with beneficiaries that included R.N. insiders like her father, the founder of the party, Jean-Marie Le Pen.  The elder Le Pen died at the age of 96 on January 7.

Judge de Perthuis rejected claims from Le Pen that such practices have been widespread.  Patrick Maisonneuve, the European Parliament’s lawyer, praised the decision as “a clear demonstration of a structured system to divert funds.”  The BBC reports that the judge opined,

It was established that all these people were actually working for the party, that their (EU) lawmaker had not given them any tasks[.] ... The investigations also showed that these were not administrative errors ... but embezzlement within the framework of a system put in place to reduce the party’s costs.

The investigation began in 2015 after then–European Parliament president Martin Schulz flagged irregularities to France’s anti-corruption agency, the Office Européen de Lutte Antifraude (OLAF).  The ruling marks the culmination of a decade-long probe, bolstered by France’s stricter anti-corruption laws enacted since 2016.

Reporting from Le Figaro shows that Le Pen’s co-defendants received varying penalties, with the court holding the R.N. collectively accountable for repaying €4.3 million to the European Parliament.  Le Pen herself was not found to have personally profited, but the judge ruled the scheme benefited her party’s finances and inner circle.

The court’s 300-page ruling, however, seems to detail a systematic misuse of funds, supported by financial records, witness testimony, and correspondence uncovered since 2015.  According to reporting from Le Monde on Monday,

The judicial investigation indeed brought to light several testimonies and documents damning for the far-right party and its former leader. These include a letter sent by Wallerand de Saint-Just to Le Pen in June 2014. At a time when the FN was heavily in debt, its treasurer Saint-Just wrote: “We’ll only get out of this if we make significant savings thanks to the European Parliament.”

Another email exchange, dated to 2014, between Saint-Just and MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, was also troubling: “What Marine is asking of us is tantamount [to] signing up for fictitious jobs. ... I understand Marine’s reasons, but we’re going to get screwed.”

The testimonies of former FN MEPs Aymeric Chauprade and Sophie Montel also pointed in this direction. According to Montel, Le Pen asked MEPs to hire just one assistant and leave the rest of their parliamentary allowance to the FN. To investigators, Montel stated that, in her view, there was little doubt of the existence of “a system of employment of fictitious parliamentary assistants paid from European Parliament funds but actually working for the Front National party.”

Le Journal du Dimanche identified Charles Van Houtte, Le Pen’s accountant, as a key figure in executing the scheme.  Van Houtte told police in 2017 that Le Pen “communicated her instructions regarding the identity of the staff to be allocated from the budgetary envelopes of the FN MEPs, by having him come to her office in Brussels or Strasbourg, and that her instructions were always verbal.”  Reporting from Marianne.net further states that records for the “sums of money and the assistants attached to them” were displayed in the courtroom.  Although he was seen as the “kingpin of fraud” for Le Pen, he denied any fraudulent intent.

Although there is evidence to support the court’s ruling, the severity of the sentence is unprecedented for a French political figure of Le Pen’s stature.  Thus, the court’s ruling has fueled speculation of political targeting.

Critics note the timing, with Macron’s centrist coalition weakening and Le Pen’s R.N. gaining ground in recent polls.  As has been the case with Trump’s legal battles in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro’s trial in Brazil, some believe that the French judiciary system is also being influenced by the political establishment in France, arguably seeking to neutralize a populist threat with lawfare.

Le Pen and her allies swiftly decried the verdict as politically motivated.  “This is an attempt at my political death,” she declared outside the courthouse, likening her situation to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal battles.  Her lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, called it “a blow to democracy,” while R.N. president Jordan Bardella stated in a March 31 X post, “It is not only Marine Le Pen who is unjustly condemned but it is also the French democracy that has been executed.”  The defense argued that the funds were used legitimately and that the court’s narrow definition of an E.U. assistant’s role unfairly targeted the R.N.

In a BBC interview on Monday, Le Pen asserted her intention to appeal and confirmed the belief that her case has been politicized by a corrupted judicial system.  “This evening, there are millions of French people who are outraged seeing that in France, the country of human rights, judges have implemented measures that are reserved to authoritarian regimes.”

Image: Marine Le Pen.  Credit: Rémi Noyon via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.