PARIS: French far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen will learn in March whether she will be declared ineligible for elections, a Paris court said on Wednesday at the end of a trial for embezzling funds from the European Parliament.
Prosecutors have asked judges at the Paris criminal court that any sentence shutting Le Pen out of public office be applicable even if she appeals the court’s ruling.
That means that if found guilty on March 31, she could be blocked from participating in France’s next presidential election, scheduled for 2027 at the latest.
“This case is a lot less simple than some wanted to think. I still hope we will be heard” by the court, Le Pen, 56, told reporters following the hearing.
Her defense lawyer Rodolphe Bosseult had earlier told judges that prosecutors’ sentencing request was “a weapon of mass destruction of the way things work in a democracy.”
Bosseult added that if imposed, the penalty would affect “the whole electoral roll or even the validity of the vote” in any election.
Prosecutors’ bombshell request was topped off with a five-year jail term, three of which suspended, and a fine of 300,000 euros ($320,000).
At issue in the case are employment practices for assistants in the European Parliament to representatives of Le Pen’s National Front party — since renamed the National Rally (RN) — between 2004 and 2016.
Prosecutors say the party created a “system” using MEPS’ parliamentary allowances to hire people who in fact worked for the outfit in France — not in Brussels or Strasbourg.
The defense struggled throughout the case to produce evidence that any of the supposed assistants had in fact carried out relevant work.
And the European Parliament itself said the RN had cooked the books to the tune of 4.5 million euros.
Prosecutors said that Le Pen could again misuse public funds if allowed to continue in elected office, as justification for their sentencing request.
But her lawyer Bosselut said that the RN’s financial practices at the time were “banal... shared by every European party” in the parliament.
Buoyed this year by the RN’s unprecedented success at snap parliamentary elections, becoming France’s largest single party in parliament, Le Pen has characterised the sentencing request as an attempt to remove her by means of the judiciary rather than a political fair fight.
Court to rule on ineligibility for France’s Le Pen in March
https://arab.news/jpsek
Court to rule on ineligibility for France’s Le Pen in March
- “This case is a lot less simple than some wanted to think. I still hope we will be heard” by the court, Le Pen, 56, told reporters
- Her defense lawyer Rodolphe Bosseult had earlier told judges that prosecutors’ sentencing request was “a weapon of mass destruction of the way things work in a democracy“
Trump tells US govt to ‘immediately’ stop using Anthropic AI tech
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump told the US government Friday to “immediately” stop using Anthropic’s technology after the AI startup rejected the Pentagon’s demand that it agree to unconditional military use of its Claude models.
Anthropic insists its technology should not be used for the mass surveillance of US citizens or deployed in fully autonomous weapons systems, while the Pentagon says it operates within the law and that contracted suppliers cannot set terms on how their products are employed.
“I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology. We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic’s products, at various levels,” the US president said, referring to the Department of Defense.
Anthropic did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s announcement.
The Pentagon had said Anthropic must agree to comply with its demand by 5:01 p.m. Friday or face compulsion under the Defense Production Act.
The Cold War-era law, last invoked during the Covid pandemic, grants the federal government sweeping powers to direct private industry toward national security priorities.
The Pentagon also threatened to designate Anthropic a supply chain risk — a label typically reserved for companies from adversary nations — which could severely damage its ability to work with the US government and harm its broader reputation.
But Anthropic refused, with its chief executive Dario Amodei saying Thursday that “these threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.”
