A request was made separately for the trial of the RN’s parliamentary helpers, which is presently underway in Paris.
According to sources close to the matter, the European Parliament is demanding more than 300,000 euros from Jean-Marie Le Pen for improperly billing the institution for MEP-related expenditures.
According to his lawyer, François Wagner, the former far-right leader has filed an appeal with the European Union’s General Court against this decision.
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The Secretary General of the European Parliament claims precisely 303,200.99 euros from Jean-Marie Le Pen in a decision notified to him on July 8, but not made public.
The issue at hand is the use of mandate expenses under the European Parliament’s “budget line 400,” which is intended to cover “the administrative and operating expenses of the political groups and the secretariat of non-attached Members,” as well as those “related to political and information activities within the framework of the political activities of the European Union.”
“These credits cannot be used to finance any form of European, national, regional or local electoral campaign” or “be used for the purchase of real estate or vehicles”, specifies the institution’s regulations.
However, between 2009 and 2018, Jean-Marie Le Pen was unduly reimbursed, within the framework of this “budget line 400”, for expenses on news bulletins, pens, business cards, ties, umbrellas, kitchen scales, desk clocks, connected bracelets, virtual reality glasses or even 129 bottles of wine, according to a report by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).
OLAF had notably estimated that several news bulletins were “copy-pastes” of freely accessible texts and had been overcharged “about the work carried out to produce them”, according to extracts from its report published by Mediapart in March 2022.
The European Parliament told reporters that “the Parliament’s administration is required, when it receives serious indications that funds have been unduly paid, to verify compliance with the applicable administrative financial rules of the case in question.
To request clarification from the Member concerned and to recover the money unduly paid if no proof of compliant expenditure is provided. This does not replace any judicial procedure or investigation,” the institution adds.
