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The French financial police searched the headquarters of the right -wing extremist racial party in France to determine the financing of their election campaigns.
Party leader Jordan Bardella said in a post on X that around 20 armed officials from the French financial police brigade searched the party of the Paris office of the party on Wednesday morning and confiscated e -mails, documents and accounting information that went back to 2022.
“The entire files on the latest regional, presidential, parliamentary and European campaigns – all election activities of the party – are now in the hands of the judiciary,” said Bardella.
He said the officials were accompanied by two investigative judges.
The operation takes place months after the three -time presidential candidate of the RN, Marine Le Pen and other party members guilty Immace the EU Fund and possibly block them from the presidential elections in 2027 from the fight against offense. She appeals against the verdict and says that she will still enable President Emmanuel Macron’s successor.
Paris’ prosecutor said that the raid on Wednesday was part of an investigation that, according to “several warnings of an institutional source”, was claimed that the party had illegally financed its campaigns with loans from supporters.
“The court investigation aims to determine whether these campaigns were financed by illegal loans from people who benefit the party or their candidates, as well as overlapping services or invoices for fake services that were later submitted to the reimbursement inquiries for the campaign expenditure,” said the public prosecutor’s office.
Loans of supporters are not illegal as long as their use is not “common” and the money is reimbursed within a certain time.
They are not subject to the usual strict donation caps of the French electoral system, which are carefully checked by the campaign guard. Individuals can only donate € 7,500 per year per political party and € 4,600 per election per candidate.
In view of its chronic difficulties in securing French banks for financial campaigns, the RN has asked the supporters several times to take part in so -called “patriotic lending plans”, in which they will contribute at least 500 euros, which will later be refunded with interest.
In an interview with AFP in the European Parliament in Strasbourg On Wednesday, Bardella said: “No French bank wanted to give the racial emile nationally to finance their election campaigns.
The prosecutors are now examining whether some of these loans were too big and took too long what violated the campaign financing rules.
The examination is another blow for Le Pen and the RN, both of which have been occurring since their conviction. The legal ailments have called in Ask Her long -term role as the leader of the right -wing extremist party, which her father had founded decades ago, led to new cracks in it.
Le Pen and 29-year-old Bardella both said that he would run for the presidency if she was prevented from doing so. But her once solid mutual loyalty is now under pressure.
On a trip to the French area in New Caledonia last month, Le Pen made a question from journalists why Bardella was not with her. “I am not sure whether Jordan is very familiar with the problems of the New Caledonia. We have different talents,” she said with irritation.
Bardella said of the raid on Wednesday: “This spectacular and unprecedented operation is clearly a new (type) harassment. It is a serious attack on pluralism and democratic transition. An opposition party has never suffered such persecution under the fifth Republic.”
In the past few days, the media have reported that the European Parliament also examines the allegations that the parliamentary group of the RN committed misconduct by granting money for charity organizations and organizations that were sympathetic with its ideal. The EU Parliament was located at the origin of the misappropriation, which led to Le Pens conviction.
