Le Pen’s procedural question will be decided during the deliberations
The Paris Court of Appeal indicated that it would rule during the deliberations of the trial of the assistants of MEPs from the National Front on the complex procedural question raised on Wednesday by Marine Le Pen‘s defense. “The court joins the incident to the merits,” declared its president Michèle Agi.
The defense of the leader of the extreme right yesterday raised a confusion arising from the order of referral to the criminal court (ORTC), this document summarizing the case and listing the charges which the magistrates are seized of at the hearing to conduct the trial.
In the case of the parliamentary assistants of FN MEPs, the judges of first instance took into account an annexed table, unsigned, listing all the contracts, even though some had not given rise to indictments of assistants.
The court ruled that the document was sufficient to prosecute Marine Le Pen as party president for complicity in embezzlement for all contracts.
However, for Marine Le Pen’s lawyer, Me Rodolphe Bosselut, “this resulted in a worsening of the criminal situation” of his client, “for an additional value of supposed embezzlement of 1.4 million euros”, he argued yesterday. Representing the prosecution, the attorneys general also considered during Wednesday’s debates that in first instance, the Paris criminal court “overestimated” the charges before it.
