France's Le Pen denies wrongdoing as she and her party go on trial accused of embezzling EU funds
France's Le Pen denies wrongdoing as she and her party go on trial accused of embezzling EU funds
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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I believe that she thinks embezzling isn’t wrong.
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.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".
vowed to present the judges with “extremely serious and extremely solid arguments.″
Super duper totally for real arguments that aren't made up at all. In fact, you're the liar!
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.
While I share your hate towards far right parties, your comment is an extreme generalization and paints reality in a very dualistic perspective. The reality is complex, nothing is black and white - leaning on one side doesn’t mean the other one is entirely wrong and vice versa. The RN main topics (Immigration, security and isolation) are complicated topics; for low level politicians (e.g. village mayors) and many FN sympathizers, the problem is in the details (e.g. having more foreigners vs making sure they’re integrated). There’s a lot of crap and propaganda coming from the far right upper leaders, but I think that generalizing all of them under a same umbrella just adds another layer of confusion on very confused societies that don’t even understand their own confusion. The least educated are just the easiest to influence
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
Denies any wrongdoing
Sorry but I don't care of you're left or right but that denial is not news, it doesn't mean anything. No politician would be "oh yeah, that was me!", so THAT would actually be news. This just "because of course she says that", wake me up when she's convicted
I dont want to say it, but I think your sleep will be deep and long
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.
We have our own to deal with, you can keep the bitch, tyvm
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https://apnews.com/article/le-pen-embezzling-eu-funds-far-right-2cf9684146178c978bce402d0d73521f