French police raid far-right National Rally HQ over campaign finance allegations
French police raided Marine Le Pen's National Rally headquarters on Wednesday over alleged campaign finance violations, prompting RN president Jordan Bardella to decry a "new harassment campaign" against the far-right party.
The raid dealt a fresh blow to the RN, which has been reeling since Le Pen was convicted in March of embezzling EU funds and barred from running in the 2027 election. On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights rejected Le Pen's request for it to intervene and suspend her five-year ban.
The RN has become France's largest single parliamentary party but remains toxic for many due to its past association with antisemitism and racism.
It has also struggled to shed accusations of financial impropriety during its rise from a scrappy, once-taboo party to one of France's most powerful political entities.
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Bardella broke the news of Wednesday's raid on X.
"Since 8:50 this morning, the headquarters of the National Rally, including the offices of its leaders, have been subjected to a raid conducted by approximately twenty police officers ... accompanied by two investigating judges," Bardella wrote.
The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed the searches, which it said related to an investigation into an unnamed person opened last week following several reports from institutional sources. It said searches were carried out at the RN's headquarters, as well as at the offices of several unnamed companies and the homes of those companies' executives.
The inquiry is related to campaign loans that appear to have been fraudulently issued, in excess of legal limits, between 2020 and 2024, prosecutors said.
The alleged violations were related to the financing of campaigns during the 2022 presidential, 2022 legislative and 2024 European election campaigns, they said. No person or legal entity has been charged to date and the investigation is still ongoing, they added.
On Tuesday, EU financial prosecutors said they had opened a separate investigation into alleged misuse of 4.3 million euros ($5.04 million) by Identity and Democracy, a now-defunct, far-right European Parliament bloc that included the RN.
Le Pen, who denied wrongdoing in the embezzlement case, aims to get her March conviction overturned so that she can run in the 2027 election, her fourth attempt at top office, but Bardella has said he will run if she cannot.
The decision by the European Court of Human Rights to reject Le Pen's petition was a further setback for the far-right leader, who has been a longtime critic of the ECHR.
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It said it had thrown out her request as it did not believe French judges had caused "irreparable harm to a right protected" by human rights law by banning her from office.
Le Pen had argued that her inability to stand in 2027 would create a risk of serious and irreparable harm to her rights and those of voters.
This article was produced by Reuters news agency. It has not been edited by Global South World.
