French court asked on the 29th and 30th March that the European Parliament lift the immunity of the presidential candidate of the National Front Marine Le Pen. The latter is suspected of having used sham parliamentary assistants.
A French court has asked the European Parliament to lift the immunity of Marine Le Pen under investigation on fictitious job suspicion of parliamentary assistants of the National Front, are we learned Friday from judicial source.
Investigating judges have sent requests for waiver of parliamentary immunity of MEPs Marine Le Pen and Marie-Christine Boutonnet on 29 and 30 March, the source said, confirming a Europe1 information.
“It’s normal,” says Le Pen
This is “normal procedure” responded Marine Le Pen. “It’s normal, it’s the procedure entirely conventional” , said the FN candidate in the presidential election on USAinformations.
His lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut is in the other hand is “surprised” to AFP, “since he had the commitment of Marine Le Pen to appear before the judges after the laws, subject to the results of the presidential election “
The candidate of the extreme right party presidential refused March 10 to attend a meeting of judges in view of a possible indictment in the case, citing his immunity .
In this case, the Paris prosecutor’s office conducted a preliminary investigation before handing the file to the investigating judge in December.
Her immunity already up before
Investigators are looking into whether the National Front organized a system to remunerate permanent party with public funds from the EU, through the contracts of assistants in the European Parliament.
MEP Marie-Christine Boutonnet did was not restored to its convocation in financial judges early March.
Investigating judges have indicted for “the misuse of trust” two parliamentary assistants, Charles Hourcade, a time employed as a graphic designer at party headquarters in Nanterre and Catherine Griset, identified as Marine Le Cabinet Chief Pen at the headquarters of the FN .
Unlike an ordinary litigant, investigating judges do not have the ability to constrain the MEP to appear before them. For any forcible action, they must first obtain the lifting of his immunity to the European Parliament, as has been done in a different folder instructed by investigating judges in Nanterre , where he is alleged to have distributed him abuses of images of the jihadist group Islamic State (EI) on Twitter.
