Le Pen describes the Prosecutor’s request for disqualification for embezzlement as “repugnant”

MADRID 16 Nov. () –

The leader of the French far-right party National Rally (AN), Marine Le Pen, has described the accusation of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, which asks her for five years in prison and disqualification from public office for crimes of embezzlement of European Union funds, as “disgusting” and “deeply outrageous.”

“(This accusation) calls for disproportionate sentences with respect to the slightest accusation of the same type, going so far as to ask for the political death penalty,” Le Pen said during an interview with the French television network TF1.

Le Pen and 26 other AN members are being tried in a case of alleged false parliamentary assistants with whom they have 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.

The French MP has insisted that they have not violated any French law or any of the European Parliament’s regulations. “We are innocent of the acts that are accused of us.”

“We did not receive a single cent more than we had the right to hire assistants. Their functions consist of helping deputies not only in their legislative work but also in their political activity. We were simply doing politics to defend the interests of the French,” has asserted.

Likewise, he has denounced that “it is not the litigant that is judged, but rather the political objective.” “The objective is to attack a political opponent. Beyond me, it is the French people who have no hope. It is a very violent attack on democracy. (…) The prosecutor’s office is not independent,” he added.

AN has launched a campaign to collect signatures to show rejection of the Prosecutor’s Office request and also convey support to Le Pen. “Defend democracy, support Marine,” reads the heading of the relevant press release published by the group on its website.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office demanded on Wednesday a conviction against Le Pen for a case of embezzlement of European Union funds, and requested a sentence of five years in prison and disqualification from provisional execution, with which she could be deprived of participate in the 2027 presidential elections.

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.