For many years, I have observed Marine Le Pen and her party and how they operate in France. I have heard their xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric and felt it contaminate French political life. It is a rhetoric rooted in the history of a party founded by figures from France’s postwar far right. Nothing they do or say surprises me any more. But even by their standards the crime is extraordinary.
A French court of appeal confirmed last week that Le Pen was guilty of a central role in orchestrating a scheme that systematically embezzled public funds for more than a decade. That the investigation also took 10 years may explain the absence of public shock waves, or why the focus has been on Le Pen’s future political moves rather than on her misdeeds. So let’s recap.
Essentially this was about an organised fake jobs scam instigated in 2004 by the leadership of the National Front (FN), now the National Rally (RN).
The party claimed EU salaries for staff supposedly working as MEPs’ assistants at the European parliament. But this money did not go to anyone carrying out legitimate European parliamentary duties: it was funnelled to France to support the activities of the party there. Among staff on its payroll as bogus MEPs’ assistants were Le Pen’s bodyguard and longtime personal assistant. The deception continued for 11 years until 2016.
The case is unprecedented in the history of French political life. Twenty-eight defendants in total were brought to court, including Marine Le Pen and her late father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was an MEP until 2019. The ruling should have been enough to shift the debate beyond the narrow (if gripping) question of whether or not Le Pen would be able to stand in the next French presidential election.
Yet, since her initial conviction by a lower court in March 2025, public attention has focused on Le Pen’s ambition to run in 2027. The court of appeal judges left the door open for a presidential campaign, as long as she wears an electronic tag. They softened her sentence to three years of imprisonment, with two years suspended and the remaining year to be served by electronic monitoring. She was fined €100,000. She was also declared ineligible for public office, but only for 45 months, 30 of them suspended. And as she has now appealed to France’s highest court, there is a stay on her tagging pending that decision. Within hours of the ruling she had launched her campaign for the 2027 election.
But the “will she, won’t she run” issue is arguably, the wrong question. It has eclipsed a necessary discussion of the abuse of power by a party that is now the single biggest in the French parliament.
The issue that should be convulsing France is Le Pen’s legitimacy as a public representative. According to the judges, she was central to the fake jobs scheme. The scam was carried out “under the decisive impetus” of Le Pen herself, having taken it over from her father, Jean Marie. A politician who aspires to the highest office in France was the driving force behind what is described in a 341-page decision as “grave” offences.
The Paris court of appeal based this conclusion on several factors. First, the duration of the offences: spanning three parliamentary terms, which, in the judges’ view, demonstrated that it was deeply entrenched rather than an isolated case of misconduct. Second, the sums that were misappropriated: €4.9m according to the initial suspicions of the European parliament, with €2.8m proven to have been misused according to the appeal court.
The RN itself as a legal entity was also convicted of diverting European parliament funds. The party was fined €2m, half of it suspended.
Since 1988, no French presidential election has taken place without a Le Pen – father or daughter – on the ballot. As if inheriting her family’s political capital were not enough, Marine Le Pen now stands at the centre of a system that fundamentally contradicts the values her party has always claimed to embody. Indeed, these guilty verdicts place the RN in a singularly contradictory position.
For years, the party campaigned under the slogan mains propres et tête haute (“Clean hands and heads held high”), presenting itself as the party of political integrity.
“Everyone has been dipping into the public purse except the National Front,” Le Pen declared during a TV debate at the time. In 2013, she publicly demanded lifetime bans from public office for elected officials convicted of offences. “When are we going to introduce lifetime ineligibility for all those convicted of offences committed in connection with their public office?” she asked.
It was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was a formal pledge in her presidential platform, explicitly targeting elected officials convicted of embezzlement of public money.
Yet even as she vaunted her own supposedly spotless record on corruption – her hands were “immaculate” she announced – the scheme for which she would later be convicted twice, was up and running.
That a party claiming to stand for law and order should be so deeply mired in financial scandal is ironic. It is also indefensible. Can a party whose rhetoric on crime is uncompromising have any credibility after being found to have orchestrated the misappropriation of public funds?
Yet to me, the appeal court showed a degree of leniency inconsistent with its verdict. French law allows for up to 10 years’ ineligibility for elected officials convicted of serious breaches of probity such as embezzlement of public funds.
I can think of a range of professions in France – from law, accountancy and the civil service to childcare, healthcare and security – where a criminal conviction linked to the exercise of professional duties would result in the offender being struck off, disqualified or barred from practising for a time.
Such restrictions are intended to protect public trust. And French courts regularly impose custodial sentences in cases of embezzlement involving much less significant financial losses. In a 2022 decision, the court of cassation upheld the criminal conviction of a mayor who diverted €19,240 of municipal funds. Besides a fine, he was permanently barred from public employment and disqualified from seeking public office for five years.
The RN, which claims to defend France and the French people, instead deceived them and deprived them of what was rightfully theirs for its own benefit. Contrary to the racist and xenophobic narrative the party has long promoted, it is not immigrants who have been living off France, but the party’s own leaders, who diverted public funds intended to sustain the functioning of our democratic institutions. Marine Le Pen has never expressed remorse. She has never apologised for betraying the “republican values” she so often invokes while claiming to defend the nation. And that, more than anything else, should have disqualified her and her party, beyond appeal.
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Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, film-maker, activist and Guardian Europe columnist.