Prosecution wants 2-year prison

sentence for Marine Le Pen

PARIS (AP) -- Paris prosecutors on Wednesday requested a 2-year prison sentence for far-right leader Marine Le Pen and an additional 5-year period of ineligibility to run for office, in a trial over the suspected embezzlement of European Parliament funds where her ability to participate in the 2027 presidential race is at stake.

The National Rally party and 25 of its officials, including Le Pen, are accused of using money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc's regulations. The National Rally was called the National Front at the time.

Prosecutors asked the court to declare Le Pen guilty and impose a 300,000-euro ($316,700) fine and three more years of suspended prison sentence. They requested that the period of ineligibility be declared effective immediately, independent of whether Le Pen files an appeal or not.

The nine-week trial is scheduled to finish Nov. 27, with a verdict at a later date. Defense lawyers are to speak in the next couple of weeks.

Le Pen did not show any emotion in the courtroom as she listened to the prosecutors' demands.

"It's no surprise," she told reporters. "I note that the prosecutors' claims are extremely outrageous."

Le Pen said she felt prosecutors were "only interested" in preventing her from running for president in 2027. "I understood that well," she said.

Le Pen was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party's electoral support has grown in recent years.

Prosecutors also requested a guilty verdict for all other co-defendants, including various sentences of up to one year in prison and a 2-million euro fine for the party.

Prosecutor Louise Neyton said the judicial investigation has shown that the alleged fraudulent acts "are unprecedented because of their scope, duration and because of their organized, automatic and systemic nature." She denounced "the serious and lasting damage these facts and this behavior have caused to the democratic game."

Le Pen has focused all her energy in recent weeks fighting what she claims are unfair accusations.

From the outset of the long and complex trial, she has been a forceful presence, sitting in the front row, staying for long hours into the night and expressing her irritation at allegations she says are wrong.

A lawyer by training, she follows the proceedings with extreme attention, sometimes puffing her cheeks, making her disagreement known with forceful nods of the head and striding over to consult with her lawyers, her heels loudly clicking on the courtroom's wooden floors.

Le Pen has denied accusations she was at the head of "a system" meant to siphon off EU parliament money to the benefit of her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021. Speaking in court last week, she instead argued the missions of the aides were to be adapted to the MEPs' various activities, including some highly political missions related to the party.

Parliamentary aide "is a status," she said. "It says nothing about the job, nothing about the work required, from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphic designer, from the bodyguard to the MEP's office employee."

Le Pen's co-defendants -- most of whom owe her their political or professional careers -- testified under her close watch.

Some of the aides provided embarrassed and confused explanations, faced with the lack of evidence their work was related to the EU parliament.

Often, they could hear her bringing precisions or rectifications even when it wasn't her turn to address the court. Sometimes, she would punctuate a point they made with a loud "voila" ("that's it").

Le Pen insisted the party "never had the slightest remonstrance from the Parliament" until a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European body, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of EU funds by members of the National Front.

"Let's go back in time. The rules either didn't exist or were much more flexible," she said.

cap: Marine Le Pen AP-Yonhap