The Paris public prosecutor’s office a week ago Tuesday launched a judicial investigation into suspicions of illicit financing of Marine Le Pen’s campaign during the 2022 presidential election, BFMTV reported, citing reliable sources.
Although begun in 2023, the fact that this investigation is becoming above-the-fold news in France’s media may be a sign of things to come under the new extreme-left-led majority in the Assembly.
Le Pen and her RN (National Rally) party’s president Jordan Bardella have been in the sights of the Paris prosecutor’s office, BFMTV learned from corroborating sources. According to their information, a judicial investigation into suspicions of illicit financing of Marine Le Pen’s campaign during the 2022 presidential election was launched on July 2.
A judicial source told BFMTV the investigation was launched for several reasons: a loan from a legal entity to a candidate in an electoral campaign; acceptance by a candidate in a loan campaign from a legal entity; misappropriation of property by persons exercising public functions; fraud committed against a public person; forgery and use of forgery.
The Presentation of the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP), responsible for controlling the regularity of candidates’ expenses, which are capped and part of which is reimbursed by the State, had sent a report on the suspected irregularities of the Le Pen campaign to the Paris prosecutor’s office in 2023.
The investigations, entrusted to the financial brigade of the Parisian judicial police, “are now continuing under the direction of an investigating magistrate,” according to the public prosecutor.
Le Pen’s attorney Rodolphe Bosselut declined to comment. But a senior executive of the RN party told AFP, “We do not know what facts this concerns. We received information about the launching of this investigation, like everyone else, Tuesday morning on BFMTV.
I am very surprised because the campaign account was validated in December 2022 and reimbursed in February 2023.”
Marine Le Pen, who was re-elected as a National Assembly deputy in the first round of the snap elections on June 30, in her northern stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont near the Belgian border, has confronted the disappointing results of her party in the second round last Sunday.
The RN, which aimed for at least a relative majority in the new National Assembly, came in third with 143 – even though this figure represents an additional 50 seats compared to the 2022 election.
