On 31 March, a Paris court found Marine Le Pen, the pro-Russian leader of the National Rally party, guilty of embezzling public funds and barred her from running for public office, according to BFMTV.
The verdict includes a two-year suspended prison sentence and an additional two years of house arrest with an electronic monitoring bracelet. It also disqualifies Le Pen from running for the European Parliament or holding any public office for five years.
Alongside Le Pen, eight other Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were found guilty of misappropriating funds in the case involving parliamentary assistants of the National Rally.
Twelve aides tried alongside them were also convicted of possessing stolen goods. The total damages in the case were estimated at €2.9 million, as the European Parliament paid for individuals who were actually working for the far-right party.
The Guardian quotes Judge Bénédicte de Perthuis, who confirmed that “all these people were actually working for the party, that their (EU) lawmaker had not given them any tasks.”
“The investigations also showed that these were not administrative errors … but embezzlement within the framework of a system put in place to reduce the party’s costs,” the judge stated.
The ban on running for office is to take immediate effect. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen left the courtroom before the verdict was fully read.
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