A new investigation by the European anti-fraud body against Marine Le Pen entangles the campaign of the leader of the French extreme right, as happened in the 2017 elections, and as then her response is to denounce a setup and criticize the partiality of the community institutions.
“I am very used to the traps of the European Union a few days before the second round and I think the French are not fooled,” Le Pen said Monday while campaigning in the town of Saint Pierre en Auge, in Normandy, when He was asked about this matter.
He “completely” denied the accusations in the report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) that had been leaked on Sunday by the online information site MĂ©diapart. A report transmitted to the French Justice in mid-March for the possible opening of a procedure against the candidate who is playing the Elysee next Sunday against Emmanuel Macron.
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OLAF personally claims 137,000 euros from her, which it considers she embezzled when she was a member of the European Parliament because she dedicated them to French national policy purposes that did not correspond to those of her position in the European Parliament, for which they were attributed to her.
He also demands the reimbursement of other amounts (a total of 617,000 euros) from three other former MEPs from his party, the National Grouping (RN, in its French acronym): his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen; to his former partner, Louis Alliot, and to the one who was vice president of the movement, Bruno Gollnisch.
Among other things, they are accused of using this money to make donations to associations run by people close to the RN or directly to members of the party, but also to buy bottles of wine and champagne that cost thousands of euros that are not justified by acts associated with the exercise of the positions of MEPs.
Marine Le Pen and Alliot complained that, despite being the first interested parties, they have not had access to the dossier as MĂ©diapart has had, a medium to which his team does not tire of pointing out that it is ideologically marked to the left .
A story that repeats itself
It was precisely MĂ©diapart more than five years ago that revealed that OLAF was demanding from the leader of the French extreme right 339,000 euros of public funds that the European Parliament had attributed to her to pay parliamentary assistants, an issue that was haunting her during the campaign of the 2017 presidential elections.
And that at the beginning of 2018 he was charged with embezzlement on suspicion that he paid his personal secretary and his bodyguard with those funds.
On the other hand, Marine Le Pen took advantage of a question on France Bleu radio to emphasize that there are “a thousand differences” between her and her father in the political field.
She stressed that while her father created and was at the head of “a movement of contestation, of protest”, the National Front, she nonetheless leads “a movement of government” and “of proposals”.
She also emphasized that she, unlike her father, who was a furious critic of the political work of Charles de Gaulle, is a defender of the current regime of the Fifth Republic that created this historical figure.
A government with people from the right and from the left
Along the same lines of asserting himself as a figure open to the search for consensus and away from extremism, he stated that if he wins the elections, he will form “a government of national unity” that will include people “who will come from the left and the right” .
Although the only name he wanted to give was that of who would be his Minister of Justice, Jean-Pierre Garraud MEP, stated that it could include people of the profile of the former Socialist Minister of Economy Arnaud Montebourg, who left François Hollande’s Executive in August 2014 for defending industrial protectionism.
The polls published this Monday indicate an increase in the advantage of Emmanuel Macron with respect to Marine Le Pen.
According to the Ipsos poll, if the second round is held now, the French president would win with 56% of the vote, compared to 44% for his far-right opponent. According to Ifop, the result would be 54.5% for the first (one point more than Friday) and 45.5% for the second (one point less). EFE
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