Bardella recognizes that AN “is on its knees” in the face of Le Pen’s possible ineligibility for embezzlement

MADRID 15 Nov. () –

The president of the French far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, acknowledged this Thursday that his party “is on its knees”, given the possible ineligibility of its leader, Marine Le Pen, after the Paris Prosecutor’s Office has requested five years of prison and disqualification from public office for crimes of embezzlement of European Union funds.

“We cannot accept that a judge, because he has decided to have Marine Le Pen under his nose, demands the ineligibility of a potential candidate in the presidential elections,” he declared during an interview on the French network CNEWS.

In line with the words of Le Pen, who even accused the Prosecutor’s Office of trying to “exclude her from political life” and “deprive her and the French of the ability to vote for whoever they want”, Bardella has denounced that Justice French “seeks to succeed where the political class has failed.”

The far-right leader considers that the Prosecutor’s Office’s objective is to “make Marine Le Pen ineligible and financially ruin” the party, which faces a fine of 4.3 million euros, including two million suspended.

Bardella has described as “disproportionate”, “serious” and “unacceptable” the requests of the Prosecutor’s Office, which requested this Wednesday for her a sentence of five years in prison and disqualification from provisional execution, with which she could be deprived of participating in the 2027 presidential elections.

The president of AN has defended the “total honesty” of Le Pen, who has declared himself innocent of the accusations, for which he is also asked for a fine of 300,000 euros. Asked about the charges, Bardella refused to talk about “fictitious work”, but instead evoked “an administrative disagreement about the nature and role of the mission carried out by the parliamentary assistants.”

Le Pen, Bardella and 24 other AN members are being tried in a case involving alleged false parliamentary assistants with whom they allegedly embezzled funds worth at least three million euros from the European Union. Specifically, Le Pen is accused of paying three assistants who work on behalf of the party and with EU funds.

According to the accusation, the National Group would have created a “centralized management system” of the allowances paid to MEPs to remunerate their parliamentary assistants and which actually served to pay the salaries of party workers in a maneuver to “relieve the finances” of the party. the far-right formation.