{"id":393463,"date":"2024-09-30T15:24:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T13:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2024\/09\/30\/processo-le-pen-parlamento-europeo\/"},"modified":"2024-10-03T14:37:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T12:37:37","slug":"marine-le-pen-trial-begins-for-embezzlement-of-european-parliament-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/09\/30\/marine-le-pen-trial-begins-for-embezzlement-of-european-parliament-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Le Pen, trial begins for embezzlement of European Parliament funds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; A trial involving 27 politicians from the transalpine far-right for <strong>alleged misappropriation of European funds<\/strong> begins today (Sept. 30) and will last at least two months. <strong>Marine Le Pen<\/strong> and her father, <strong>Jean-Marie<\/strong>, are among the top names called to account for a staggering shortfall: <strong>\u20ac6.8 million<\/strong> put by the EU Parliament and ended up, prosecutors say, in the\u00a0<span style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\"><em><strong>Rassemblement National<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0(RN)<\/strong>\u00a0coffers<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The judicial affair that has seen the <strong>European Parliament set itself up as a civil plaintiff<\/strong> and accuse the party of the Le Pen lineage is by no means new: it dates back to 2015 when the first investigations were launched into whether <strong>funds disbursed between 2004 and 2016 by Strasbourg<\/strong> to the RN (which at the time was called the <strong><em>Front National<\/em><\/strong>) had been <strong>used for national rather than European purposes<\/strong>. The alleged violations, formalized in 2016 by the <strong>Prosecutor&#8217;s Office in Paris<\/strong>, ranged from the\u00a0<strong>wrongful appropriation of public funds<\/strong> to <strong>complicity<\/strong> and <strong>concealment<\/strong>. In 2018, Marine Le Pen was condemned to compensate the EU Parliament for <strong>almost \u20ac300,000<\/strong> for a matter concerning her <strong>parliamentary assistant<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Today,<b> <\/b><strong>some of the most prominent\u00a0<\/strong>members of the current and past leadership of the RN have ended up under indictment: <strong>Marine Le Pen<\/strong>, the historic leader of the French radical right, and her father <strong>Jean-Marie<\/strong>, the party&#8217;s controversial founder, for starters. But also <strong>Nicolas Bay<\/strong>, former secretary general of the FN and a multiple-time MEP, who was re-elected in Strasbourg last June with <strong><em>Reconqu\u00eate<\/em><\/strong> (the party of <strong>\u00c9ric Zemmour<\/strong>, who considers himself to be more &#8220;hard and pure&#8221; than the Lepenists) and now a defector\u00a0as well, and <strong>Louis Aliot<\/strong>, Le Pen&#8217;s former comrade and the first mayor in the RN quota in a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants (in <strong>Perpignan<\/strong>, in the Western Pyrenees department).<\/p>\n<p>Should the trial result in a <strong>final conviction<\/strong>, it would be a blow to the French far-right leader who has her sights set on the <strong>2027<\/strong> run for the Elys\u00e9e Palace\u2014for which, at the moment, polls have her ahead of other possible candidates, including the current president of the <em>R\u00e9publique<\/em> <strong>Emmanuel Macron<\/strong>. In addition to <strong>incarceration of up to ten years<\/strong> and <strong>fines of up to \u20acmillion<\/strong>, the penalties imposed could, in fact, also include <strong>suspension of civil rights<\/strong> for a period of five years, which would make anyone subjected to it ineligible and shatter Le Pen&#8217;s dreams of becoming the first woman in the role of head of state in transalpine history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A host of Rassemblement National personalities under indictment between Paris and Strasbourg over an alleged nearly \u20ac7 million hole. The proceedings will last for months and could become a major headache for the leader of the radical right across the Alps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":393432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26261,25755,29151,26583,26584],"class_list":["post-393463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-news-parliament-en","tag-jean-marie-le-pen-en","tag-marine-le-pen-en-2","tag-rassemblement-national-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393463"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":394657,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393463\/revisions\/394657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}