France: Le Pen dismisses reported allegations of misuse of EU funds

Nationalist leader Marine Le Pen on Monday brushed off allegations that she and several of her party members misused hundreds of thousands of euros of European Union funds, with less than a week left before she stands in the final round of the French
presidential election.

“These dirty tricks from the European Union, a few days before the second round, I’m very used to them,” Le Pen said during a campaign stop in Normandy. “I obviously and absolutely dispute these accusations.”

The Paris prosecutor said it received a report detailing alleged abuse of funds between 2004 and 2017, when Le Pen was a member of the European Parliament, from the European anti-fraud office OLAF on March 11 and is reviewing it. French investigative outlet Mediapart first reported on the OLAF report on Saturday.

Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, denied any wrongdoing in an interview with BFM TV. Le Pen is set to face President Emmanuel Macron in the election runoff on April 24. 

According to Mediapart, several political expenses claimed by Le Pen and others in her party were “fictitious.” They include promotional gear for a conference in 2014, payments to various contractors and organizations, personal wine purchases and funding for other party events unrelated to parliamentary responsibilities. 

Le Pen would personally be liable for about 137,000 euros ($148,000) and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, for roughly 303,000 euros, according to Mediapart. The total amount of alleged fraud is more than 617,000 euros.

A spokesperson for OLAF said the agency finalized its investigation in September 2021 with recommendations and sent its final report to the European Parliament and to French and Belgian judicial authorities. The probe involved several persons, both natural persons and economic operators. The spokesperson added that “final case reports are not made public by OLAF.”

Opinion polls point to a victory for Macron in the final runoff ballot on April 24, and the gap between him and Le Pen has slightly widened over the past week, according to a compilation of surveys. But it’s still likely to be a much tighter race than in the 2017 election, when Macron defeated her by more than 30 percentage points.