A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty Monday in an embezzlement case and followed up the verdict with a sentence barring her immediately from running for office for five years.
Le Pen abruptly left the Paris courtroom before hearing how long she will be banned from running for public office.
Le Pen and 24 other officials from her National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations.
Le Pen and her co-defendants deny wrongdoing.
The biggest concern for Le Pen was that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office preventing her from running for president in 2027 — a scenario she had described as a “political death.”
The Constitutional Council ruled Friday, in a separate case, that imposing the punishment immediately was constitutional.
Le Pen, 56, was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party’s electoral support has grown in recent years.
During the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, she argued that ineligibility “would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate” and disenfranchise her supporters.
“There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,” she told the panel of three judges.
With Le Pen unable to run in 2027, her seeming natural successor would be Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s 29-year-old protégé who succeeded her at the helm of the party in 2021.
Le Pen denied accusations she was at the head of “a system” meant to siphon off EU parliament money to benefit her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021.
She argued instead that it was acceptable to adapt the work of the aides paid by the European Parliament to the needs of the lawmakers, including some highly political work related to the party, which was called the National Front at the time.
While testifying, Le Pen told the court: “I absolutely don’t feel I have committed the slightest irregularity, the slightest illegal move.”
Hearings showed that some EU money was used to pay for Le Pen’s bodyguard — who was once her father’s bodyguard — as well as her personal assistant.
Prosecutors asked the court to declare Le Pen guilty, requesting a two-year prison sentence and a five-year period of ineligibility.
Le Pen said she felt they were “only interested” in preventing her from running for president.
The Kremlin on Monday slammed the ruling as ‘violating democratic norms’.
“More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a briefing when asked about the decision.
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban took to X soon after the sentencing to show his support for Le Pen posting simply, ‘Je suis Marine!’ appropriating the ‘Je suis Charlie’ slogan that united France after the offices of Charlie Hebdo were targeted by terrorists in 2015.
Prosecutors also requested a guilty verdict for all the other co-defendants, including various sentences of up to one year in prison and a €2 million ($2.2 million) fine for the party. – France24.
