France: Court excludes Marine Le Pen for years of elections

The French right -wing populist Marine Le Pen was guilty in a fraud process and must not compete in the next presidential election. The court in Paris ruled on Monday that Le Pen was excluded by all public offices for five years with immediate effect. This means that the 56-year-old must not compete as a candidate in the presidential election in France in 2027. Le Pen also received a prison sentence of four years. Two of them are subject to probation and the remaining two are to be compensated for by wearing an electronic anklewell, as the judge in Paris judged on Monday. Le Pen also received a fine of 100,000 euros.

Even in the event of an appeal, the uncleability remains. Until the end of the election period, Le Pen can continue to sit as a member of parliament, where she is the group leader. The court also condemned all other defendants to withdraw the passive right to vote. According to the newspaper “Le Monde”, vice-party leader Louis Aliot was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and three years of non-election without immediate execution “to protect the freedom of voters who chose their mayor,” said the chairwoman. Aliot is the mayor of the southern French city of Perpgnan.

Before the presiding judge announced the complete judgment and the complete punishment against Le Pen, the politician left the courtroom. You also face a prison and a fine.

Le Pen is expected to appeal to the judgment. It should follow a long way through the judicial authorities. “It is my political death that is required with preliminary enforcement, and I think that is the goal of this operation from the start,” Le Pen reacted to the request of the indictment to immediately exclude it from the election for political offices.

The central accusation in the process was that Le Pens party got racial emblems national money for parliamentary assistants from the European Parliament, but some of them had worked for the party. The affair had burdened Le Pen and her party for years.

The legal national party in France hits the debacle in court at an unfavorable moment. For a while she has been constantly represented on the advance and in parliament as never before. The right-wing extremist Front National, founded by her recently deceased father Jean-Marie, named Marine Le Pen 2018 in racial emblems nationally and waived too radical positions in order to make the party selectable for wider layers of the population.

Le Pen has always rejected the allegations against them. “I don’t have the feeling that I have committed the slightest impact on the slightest illegality,” she said in the process.

With her, eight other MPs of her party were guilty of the European Parliament, as well as 12 parliamentary assistants. In the room there was the possible sham activity of assistants by several French MEPs.

This article is continuously updated.