Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right, has been found guilty by a French court of embezzling public funds. At present, the sentence against her has not yet been announced, including whether she will be stripped of her eligibility to run for office.

Along with Le Pen, the court found eight of her party’s MEPs guilty of embezzling a total amount of €474,000. Additionally, twelve aides to the MEPs were found guilty of accepting illegal benefits.

According to Libération, the court declared that it had found evidence of 40 fake employment contracts over a span of nearly 12 years, amounting to a total of €4.6 million.

“The investigation showed that this was not a case of administrative errors… but embezzlement within the framework of a system aimed at reducing the party’s expenses,” said the presiding judge.

It is noted that the prosecutor’s recommendation, presented on November 13, 2024, proposed not only a five-year ban on Le Pen’s right to run for public office, but also a three-year suspended prison sentence and a total fine of €300,000.

The case concerned the misuse of public funds and, more specifically, whether Marine Le Pen’s party had, over a number of years, used European funds – intended to cover MEP assistants’ salaries – to instead pay party executives, in violation of EU rules.