France: Marine Le Pen sentenced to 4 years in prison for embezzlement

A French court has sentenced far-right leader Marine Le Pen to four years in prison, including two years of electronic bracelet arrest and two years of suspended sentence, and banned her from running for five years, making it impossible for her to run in the 2027 presidential election.

The leader of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for embezzlement, 2 of which were suspended.

• Le Pen and eight MEPs from her party were found guilty of misappropriation of European Parliament funds.
• Marine Le Pen has lost the right to run for president of France for 5 years.
• This means that she will not be able to run in the 2027 elections. In 2017 and 2022, she made it to the 2nd round but lost to Macron.

According to a court verdict in Paris, Marine Le Pen was sentenced to 4 years in prison. Of these, 2 years are suspended, and she will spend another 2 years wearing an electronic bracelet. Le Monde reported this with reference to the verdict of the Paris Criminal Court.

A court in Paris found Marine Le Pen and eight MEPs from the National Rally guilty of misappropriation of European Parliament funds.

The case of embezzlement of the European Parliament’s funds had been under consideration since September 30, 2024. The court found Le Pen and her associates guilty of fictitious employment of assistants. According to the investigation, 20 people who were supposed to work in the European Parliament were actually performing tasks for the party.

This violates the rules according to which the salaries of assistants are financed from the budget of the European Parliament, not from the funds of a political party.

The investigation found that the party had a system of “fictitious contracts” that let them get money from the European Parliament.

“None of the contractors actually did anything, and the funds remained with the party’s MEPs,” the court said.

In addition, several witnesses, as well as e-mails and SMS messages seized during the judicial investigation, attest that Marine Le Pen ordered and supervised the system. She “had real impetus and decision-making power over the principle of recruitment, the assignment of a collaborator to the envelope of a particular MP, bonuses, and this independently of the European MP to whom the parliamentary assistant was theoretically assigned,” the investigating judges wrote, according to Mediapart.

Marine Le Pen was accused of misappropriating 137 thousand euros of funds she received while serving in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2017. Besides her, 29 other individuals received convictions for embezzlement.

Le Pen has also lost the right to run for office for five years. This means that she will not be able to participate in the presidential election in 2027. The verdict will take effect immediately, even if Marine Le Pen appeals.

The politician refutes the accusations, asserting that the case stems from miscommunications within the government and bureaucracy. She left the courtroom before the verdict was announced.

As reported, Marine Le Pen is known as a pro-Russian political leader. She supported the Kremlin’s policies toward Ukraine and Syria. Le Pen also spoke out against anti-Russian sanctions. She called Crimea Russian, supporting the annexation in 2014, and opposed providing military assistance to Kyiv after Russia launched a full-scale invasion. Marine Le Pen met with Putin, and her party, National Front, received multi-million credit from a Russian bank in 2016.

Read also: Le Pen’s ally Schaffhauser’s foundation received Russian money and Babakov leaks shed light on Le Pen’s Russian ties in this article.

Read about Le Pen’s ties with the Kremlin in the past and RN’s party stance on the Russia-Ukraine war in this article.