Le Pen given four-year jail sentence, five-year ban from public office

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of the French far-right movement, has been barred from running for public office for five years, and sentenced to four years in jail, after she was found guilty of embezzlement of European Union funds.

Half of the four-year sentence, handed down after she was found guilty in an embezzlement trial, is suspended and the other half is to be served with an electronic surveillance tag. Le Pen has also been given a fine of $108,000.

On Monday, she and eight of her colleagues were found guilty of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for her National Rally party between 2004 and 2016.

The sentence is a major moment in French politics, because Le Pen heads the biggest party in parliament, and is leading the polls at the moment, two years out from the next presidential election, due in April 2027.

She will now likely be banned from standing in that election, potentially throwing the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron wide open. Macron cannot run again after serving two consecutive terms in office.

Le Pen appeared in front of the Paris high court on March 31, and sat quietly, often shaking her head, as the verdict was delivered. She left the court before the sentence was read out.

Bénédicte de Perthuis, the lead judge overseeing the case, which concluded in November last year, said:

"It was established 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."

Le Pen was also fined $108,000, and given a four-year custodial sentence, two years of which will be suspended, and the other two years to be served wearing an electronic bracelet rather than being spent behind bars.

She is the parliamentary leader of the National Rally, the largest party in the French lower house, and she has run unsuccessfully for president three times, in 2012, 2017 and 2022.

If she cannot run in 2027, it would be likely that her party's president, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, may stand in her place.

Expenses embezzlement

Including Le Pen, nine figures from her National Rally (RN) party were convicted for a scheme where they took advantage of European Parliament expenses to employ assistants who were actually working for the party.

Twelve assistants were also convicted of concealing a crime, with the court estimating the scheme was worth $3.14 million.

Three-time presidential candidate Le Pen, who scents her best-ever chance of winning the French presidency in 2027, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Le Pen said in a piece for the La Tribune Dimanche newspaper published on Sunday that the verdict gives the "judges the right of life or death over our movement."

Young pretender

With her RN emerging as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 legislative elections, Le Pen believed she had the momentum to finally take the Elysee in 2027 on the back of public concern over immigration and the cost of living.

The latest polls had predicted that she would easily top the first round of voting and make the second round two-candidate run-off.

If successful in 2027, she would have joined a growing number of staunchly right-wing leaders around the world ranging from Giorgia Meloni in Italy to Hungary's Viktor Orban.

But with Le Pen out of the running, waiting in the wings is her protege and RN party leader Jordan Bardella, just 29, who is not under investigation in the case.

In a documentary broadcast by BFMTV late on Sunday, Le Pen for the first time explicitly gave her blessing to Bardella becoming president. "Of course he has the capacity to become president of the republic," she said.

But there are doubts even within the party over the so-called "Plan B" and whether he has the experience for a presidential campaign.

Le Pen took over as head of the then-National Front (FN) in 2011 but rapidly took steps towards making the party an electoral force and shaking off the controversial legacy of its co-founder and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier this year and who was often accused of making racist and anti-Semitic comments. 

She renamed it the National Rally and embarked on a policy known as "dediabolization" (de-demonization) with the stated aim of making it acceptable to a wider range of voters.

'Political death'

A shocked Le Pen said after the prosecutors' demands were announced that they were seeking "my political death" and accused them of attempting to deny the French a free choice at the next elections.

But prosecutors have insisted there has been no "harassment" of the RN.

They accuse the party of easing pressure on its own finances by using all of the $22,700 monthly allowance to which MEPs were entitled to pay "fictitious" parliamentary assistants, who actually worked for the party in France.

And prosecutors argue that its "organized" nature was "strengthened" when Marine Le Pen took over as party leader in 2011.

Given her current popularity, even some opponents have expressed discomfort over the prospect of Le Pen not making it to the starting line of an election.

"There are a very significant number of our fellow French citizens who identify with Marine Le Pen's words and her struggle, and personally I would be very upset, to put it mildly, if she were unable to run to represent them," France's former EU commissioner Thierry Breton told French television at the weekend.