French police conducted a raid on the headquarters of the far-right National Rally party on Wednesday, seizing documents and accounting records as part of an investigation into campaign financing, according to the party’s leader.
Prosecutors are investigating potential illegal financing related to Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign, as well as campaigns for the European Parliament and French parliamentary elections.
Jordan Bardella, 29, who assumed the party presidency in 2022, stated that police confiscated “all files relating to the party’s recent regional, presidential, legislative, and European campaigns — in other words, all of its electoral activity”.
Bardella criticized the raid in a message on X, calling it “a spectacular and unprecedented operation” that is “clearly part of a new harassment operation” and “a serious attack on pluralism and democratic change.”
Associated Press journalists observed police activity outside the party’s headquarters in Paris.
The raid follows Le Pen’s April conviction for embezzlement. Le Pen, the party’s former leader and runner-up in the 2022 presidential election to Emmanuel Macron, and 24 other party officials were accused of misusing EU funds intended for parliamentary aides to pay party staff between 2004 and 2016, violating EU regulations.
However, Wednesday’s raid pertains to a separate, more recent case.
The Paris prosecutor’s office stated to the AP that searches took place at the National Rally headquarters, the headquarters of unnamed companies, and the residences of individuals leading those companies.
The searches stem from a judicial inquiry initiated a year ago into a range of allegations, including fraud, money laundering, and forgery, the prosecutor’s office said.
The inquiry aims to determine if Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign, and the party’s campaigns for the 2024 European Parliament elections and the 2022 French parliamentary elections, were financed by “illegal loans from individuals for the benefit of the party or National Rally candidates”, according to the statement.
The investigation also seeks to determine if the National Rally overbilled for services, or invoiced for fictitious services, to inflate state aid provided to the party for its election campaigns.
The prosecutor’s office clarified that no charges have been filed in the case.
