Marine Le Pen convicted of misappropriation of public funds, maintains presidential candidacy
The leader of the National Rally has been found guilty of abuse of public funds by the appeals court, which confirmed her conviction but reduced her sentence. She has announced her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election and will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Marine Le Pen convicted of misappropriation of public funds, maintains presidential candidacy
The French appeals court confirmed on Tuesday the conviction of Marine Le Pen for misappropriation of public funds, whilst mitigating her sentence. The leader of the National Rally (RN) nevertheless immediately announced her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election, according to the AFP agency cited by CNN Prima NEWS.
"This evening, I am a candidate for the presidential election," declared the far-right leader during a broadcast on TF1. She thereby ends uncertainty regarding a fourth attempt to reach the highest office in France.
The appeals court judges found Le Pen guilty of having put in place, between 2004 and 2016, a system allowing the payment of employees of her party — then called the National Front (FN) and in financial difficulty — with funds intended for parliamentary assistants within the European Parliament. The harm was evaluated at 2.8 million euros.
The court imposed a sentence of three years' imprisonment, of which one year with an electronic monitoring bracelet and two years with a suspended sentence. The individual is also subject to ineligibility for forty-five months, thirty of which are suspended. The remaining fifteen months should be applied retroactively from the first judgment, according to the AFP.
Le Pen indicated that she would contest before the Court of Cassation the part of the verdict requiring her to wear a bracelet for one year. As long as France's highest court has not ruled, she will not be required to wear this device, she clarified.
In the first instance, on 31 March of last year, the tribunal had pronounced a heavier sentence: four years' imprisonment of which two with a suspended sentence and two with an electronic monitoring bracelet, accompanied by ineligibility for five years. The fifty-seven-year-old politician had then denounced a political decision and a witch hunt.
On Tuesday evening, she reaffirmed her innocence whilst saying she was satisfied that the court had, in her view, preserved the freedom of French citizens to vote by reducing the duration of her ineligibility. She had previously stated that she would not stand if she had to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, estimating that this would harm her campaign and her credibility.
Marine Le Pen has already stood for the presidential election in 2012, 2017 and 2022, without success. Polls suggest that she could come first in the first round in 2027, although the outcome of a possible second round remains uncertain. In the event of an obstacle, the young president of the RN Jordan Bardella, aged thirty, would be considered as an alternative.
Source: Google News CZ — Crime (cs)