The European Parliament has made public that it intends to recover the over €600,000 unduly paid” to French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen during her term as MEP, AFP reports.
According to the report, the European Parliament intends to “proceed to recover the sums unduly paid” after Marine Le Pen was accused by the European anti-fraud office of embezzlement of public money on Sunday.
“The European Parliament seized Olaf (European anti-fraud office) after discovering some of the irregularities” reproached to the far-right candidate in French presidential election and three other former MEPs, a-t- he explains.
“In total we are talking about 617,000 euros unduly paid,” he said. “Now we are going to proceed in the coming weeks to recoveries from the interested parties”.
The case was revealed by the French news site Mediapart. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that it had received Olaf’s report on March 11 incriminating Marine Le Pen.
The document, of which Mediapart published the extracts, concerns the fees that political groups can use in the context of their mandate as MEPs and that Marine Le Pen and her relatives would have used for national political purposes, for personal expenses or for services for the benefit of commercial companies close to his party, the National Rally (RN) and the far-right parliamentary group Europe of Nations and Freedoms (ENL), AFP revealed.
The other three former MEPs implicated are his father Jean-Marie Le Pen , his former companion Louis Aliot and Bruno Gollnisch, member of the national office of the RN and the ENL.
Marine Le Pen and the €600,000 possibly misappropriated
The office accuses them with Marine Le Pen of having embezzled around 600,000 euros, which he recommends reimbursement.
According to the report, the candidate of the National Rally would have personally embezzled around 137,000 euros of public money from the Parliament of Strasbourg when she was an MEP between 2004 and 2017.
Olaf’s investigation has been open since 2016 and Marine Le Pen was questioned by mail in March 2021, her lawyer Me Rodolphe Bosselut told AFP.
The candidate has been prosecuted since June 2017 in the investigation carried out in Paris on suspicion of fictitious jobs in the European Parliament of party assistants.
She is indicted for “embezzlement of public funds” and “complicity” in this offense as part of this investigation.