Judges will soon deliberate on one of France’s most charged corruption cases in recent memory, when two months of court hearings over allegations against Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National end this Wednesday. The far-right party and its leader stand accused of embezzling millions of euros over a twelve-year period through false employment claims for aides to its members of the European Parliament (MEPs). The prosecutors claim that the Rassemblement National unduly appointed party cadres as MEPs’ assistants, thereby securing extra funding for work unrelated to the European Parliament. Le Pen’s defense has dismissed the accusations, claiming they misconstrue the often-overlapping roles — from actual legislative work to campaign activities — that officials take on to ensure the functioning of a modern political party.

This affair first emerged in 2014 when Le Pen — at the time an MEP and president of what was then known as the Front National — was the object of an EU investigation over the fictitious employment of two aides: her bodyguard Thierry Léger and Catherine Griset, who was her chief of staff. Griset, this June elected to her own second term as MEP, received a salary as a parliamentary aide between October 2014 and August 2015, despite spending a total of just twelve hours at the European Parliament. The funds transferred to Griset and Léger were estimated at €340,000 euros, but subsequent EU and French investigations revealed that a far larger web of individuals were involved. The European Parliament — a civil party in the current case — estimates that as much as €6.8 million euros were syphoned off in a scheme implicating over twenty Front National officials between 2004 and 2016. In a June 2014 message to Le Pen, then party treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just wrote, “We will only stay afloat if we can make some considerable savings thanks to the European Parliament.”

Fictitious employment has been at the center of several high-profile corruption cases in France, where parliamentary aides’ work is paid out of the public purse. This has been exploited by various political forces, whether for personal enrichment or as a means to cover up holes in party finances. The campaign of François Fillon — expected favorite in the 2017 presidential race as candidate for the right-wing Républicains — was sunk when he became embroiled in a scandal surrounding payments to his wife for fictitious administrative work during Fillon’s time as a parliamentarian in the 1990s and 2000s. The pair was later convicted. Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party, was put under investigation in 2022 for alleged embezzlement as a parliamentary aide in the late 2000s. A key ally of President Emmanuel Macron since 2017, François Bayrou was acquitted this February after fictitious employment allegations were raised against his MoDem party.