Far-right French politician used stolen funds to pay for party campaigns
Far-right French figurehead Marine le Pen has been convicted of embezzling European Parliament funds and banned from standing in elections for the next five years, in what appears to put an end to her hopes of running for the French presidency in 2027. Though she is likely to appeal it, French judges broke with the usual French precedent and imposed the ban with immediate effect, saying the seriousness of Le Pen’s crimes merited the action.
Le Pen was also hit with a fine of 100,000 euros and sentenced to four years in prison, with two of them suspended, but these penalties were not imposed with immediate effect and could be delayed if she appeals.
Twenty-three other people were also found guilty and received fines, bans and suspended prison sentences, while le Pen’s fascist ‘National Rally’ party was fined two million euros. National Rally president Jordan Bardella claimed the verdict was ‘democracy… being executed’.
In 2017, British far-right figure Nigel Farage’s former party UKIP was investigated for fraud by OLAF, the EU anti-fraud agency. In 2019, the European Parliament’s disciplinary body said that Farage himself should face the ‘highest penalty’ for accepting undeclared gifts from Arron Banks, the Leave.eu co-founder who in 2018 was referred to the National Crime Agency over donations around the 2016 EU referendum and then-Tory PM Theresa May stepped in and blocked a security services investigation into Banks’s funding sources. Farage is now a Reform ‘party’ MP after Labour ‘nobbled’ its own candidate to gift him a win in the 2024 general election.
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Oh dear
How does that square with claims that her party and others like it are funded, at least in part, by Putin?
Yes, there might be some truth in it but it we should tread carefully.
As always, it depends on who is making such claims and what their agenda is.
There were claims, to cite just one of many examples available, that former CIA/MI6 asset Saddam Hussain’s Iraq had WMD’s 45 minutes from London. Similarly, that the anthrax in envelopes sent to various personnel in the US in the aftermath of the 9/11 incident were claimed to be from AQ when it was subsequently proven to have come from US Government labs.
One could fill an entire encyclopedia with such examples – including the false AS narratives against the political left in the LP.
Which highlights the problem that what the extreme centre visits upon the political right with such cancel culture (i.e. outlawing) mud throwing, they will also target the political left with the same kind of accusations which the Corporate media amplify through their blatant propaganda.