French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has denied violating any rules as she and her National Rally party and two dozen others went on trial accused of embezzling European Parliament funds.

PARIS (AP) — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen denied violating any rules as she and her National Rally party and two dozen others went on trial on Monday, accused of embezzling European Parliament funds, in a case that has the potential to derail her political ambitions.

Arriving at the court in Paris, Le Pen said she remained confident as “we have not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament” and vowed to present the judges with “extremely serious and extremely solid arguments.″

Le Pen and other National Rally members casually greeted each other before sitting down in the first three rows of the packed courtroom.

The nine-week trial will be closely watched by Le Pen’s political rivals as she is a strong contender in the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron when the next presidential election takes place in 2027.

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    • oce 🐆@jlai.luEnglish
      24·
      2 months ago

      Her argument is that “Parliamentary assistants do not work for the Parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition”, so basically she says they can do whatever they want with the EU Parliament money if it is the decision of an elected person, which is clearly not the rules for this fund and she knows it.
      To make it juicer, they found records of her party members explicitly estimating that they should not do that because it is embezzlement.
      For context, this comes from a time when her party wanted Frexit similarly to the Brexit party in the UK, which the same irrational arguments. So misusing EU money was completely aligned with their idea to damage the relation. Turns out, Frexit was very unpopular even within right wing French people, so they pivoted to some kind of small EU now.

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      2 months ago

      According to the press, their argument is going to be “yes we did attribute EU funds to pay the salaries of people who weren’t helping eu deputies, but we are free to assign whatever tasks to whoever in the party and that means it was very cool and very legal, actually”.

  • voracitude@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    2 months ago

    Doesn’t matter where they’re from, or what language they speak, or even particularly what the laws are in your country: The far right are criminals, every single fucking one of them.

  • zabadoh@ani.socialEnglish
    10·
    2 months ago

    When they get their orders and talking points directly from Russia’s FSB, they don’t have to hire legislative staff to work for their constituents, do research on issues, and solve problems.

    They can use the money for political campaigning instead. No wonder they’re successful!

    Good thinking! /s

  • atro_city@fedia.io
    1·
    2 months ago

    Don’t lock her up, fine her and strip her of her French nationality. Can’t let the criminals stay within our borders! Let Belgium have her.