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The French Financial Police has raided the headquarters of the extreme right -wing Rassemblement National Party of France and seized documents with regard to recent election campaigns, said the leader of the Jordan Bardella party on Wednesday.
Bardella said in a post on X that about 20 armed officers of the French Financial Police Brigade had attacked the office of the party in Paris on Wednesday morning and had seized e -mails, documents and accounting information. He said he didn’t know the reason.
“The whole of the files with regard to the recent regional, presidential, parliamentary and European campaigns – all election activities of the party – are nowadays in the hands of the judiciary,” Bardella said.
He said the officers were accompanied by two investigating judges.
The operation comes months after the triple presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and other party members of the RN were found guilty of EU funds, which may be blocked for the office in 2027 presidential elections. She appeals to the verdict and says she will still stand to follow Macron.
The public prosecutor of Paris said that the raid was part of an investigation on Wednesday that started after “several reports of an institutional source” that claimed that the RN has funded its campaigns illegally.
“The judicial investigation is intended to determine whether these campaigns have been financed by illegal loans from persons who benefit the party or its candidates, as well as by the overborning of services or invoicing for fake services that were later included in the reimbursement requests that were submitted to the State for campaign costs,” said the prosecutor’s office in a statement.
The investigation is another blow to Le Pen and the RN, both have been waking up since her embezzlement. The legal misery have questioned her father’s long non-disputed role as leader of the extreme right-wing party and led to new gorges in it.
Le Pen and the 29-year-old Bardella both said he would run for the president if she was prevented from doing this. But their once solid mutual loyalty is now under pressure.
During a trip to the French overseas territory of New Caledonia last month, Le Pen raised a question from journalists why Bardella was not with her. “I’m not sure if Jordan is very familiar with the problems of New Caledonia. We have different talents,” she said with irritation.
Of the raid on Wednesday, Bardella said: “This spectacular and unprecedented operation is clearly a new one [kind of] intimidation. It is a serious attack on pluralism and democratic transition. An opposition party has never suffered such a persecution among the fifth Republic. ‘
In recent days, the media have reported that the European Parliament also investigates accusations that the parliamentary group of the RN misconduct has committed by granting money without sufficient controls of charities and organizations that were sympathetic to its ideals. The EU parliament was the origin of the blackout case that led to the conviction of Le Pen.