A decisive trial in more ways than one opens on Monday, September 30, at the Paris criminal court. For seven weeks, the court will examine accusations that the Front National (FN, now Rassemblement National, RN) fictitious employed parliamentary assistants and disguised financing of the party, through a mechanism by which the FN is suspected of having paid permanent members of its party using funding allocated by the European Parliament for the employment of MEPs' assistants.
A large number of senior members of Marine Le Pen's party will be sitting on the defendant benches, including Le Pen herself. There are two notable absentees, the FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and former party vice president Jean-François Jalkh, who have been excused for health reasons. The list of defendants reflects the history of the FN, with longstanding loyalists, such as Perpignan Mayor Louis Aliot, former MEP Fernand Le Rachinel and lawyer Wallerand de Saint-Just; its young hopefuls, such as MP Julien Odoul; and even its "traitors," who left following disagreements, such as MEP Nicolas Bay and Bruno Gollnisch. All are being prosecuted for "misappropriation of public funds," "concealment" of this offense, or "complicity," charges which could lead to a ban on running for elected office, which would be a major stumbling block for a party that presents itself as being on the doorstep of power.
The case erupted in 2014, when the European Anti-Fraud Office, the European Parliament's control body, received information about possible irregularities in the contracts of FN parliamentary assistants. In February 2015, these suspicions were reinforced by the publication of an official organization chart for the FN, which included 16 MEPs and 20 parliamentary assistants with partisan responsibilities. The statutes of the European Parliament explicitly forbid the use of funds meant for MEPs to employ assistants to finance national political activity. On March 9, Martin Schulz, then president of the European Parliament, wrote to the French Ministry of Justice, which in turn referred the matter to the Paris prosecutor.
Searches were carried out in February 2016 at the party's headquarters, at the homes of several assistants, and also at the Amboise Audit firm, run by Nicolas Crochet, the FN's long-standing accountant, already implicated in another case of illegal financing involving the party. This firm acted as a "third-party payer" for FN MEPs: It monitored assistants' contracts and paid their social security contributions.
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