Moscow (AFP)

The National Rally will have to be explained on June 2 before a Russian court on the non-repayment of a loan contracted in 2014, which could worsen the financial difficulties of the French far-right party, already in debt and weakened by other claims. .

A Russian firm has sued the RN for failing to repay a loan of € 9.14 million contracted in Russia in 2014, according to documents consulted Tuesday by AFP.

At the time, the revelation of this loan had raised suspicions of the Kremlin's support for Marine Le Pen's party, itself critical of the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow because of the Ukrainian crisis.

According to documents available on the website of the Moscow Court of Arbitration, the company Aviazaptchast, run by former Russian soldiers and specializing in aircraft spare parts, filed a complaint against the RN on December 10 for the "recovery credit. "

The RN was notified of this procedure by mail on December 25, according to the website of the court. The case is due to be heard at first instance on June 2.

Contacted by AFP, the treasurer of RN Wallerand de Saint-Just said that the party had "good relations" with its creditor Aviazaptchast. "We are in the process of paying it back," he added.

- Presidential -

After the payment of interest rates (which would amount to 6% depending on the RN), the party had, according to the stipulated clauses, to pay the 9 million euros in one installment in 2019.

In March 2016, the debt was transferred to a Russian car rental company, named Conti, shortly before the trusteeship of the lending bank, the First Czech-Russian Bank (FCBR), which closed in July 2016. It was then sold to the company Aviazaptchast.

Descendant of a Soviet company, Aviazaptchast sells spare parts for Russian aircraft in Asia and Africa, as well as metals for the aerospace industry in India and Syria.

If the RN were to repay this loan, its finances would risk plunging into red, while Marine Le Pen has already announced that she was a candidate in the presidential election of 2022.

Asked whether the repayment of the Russian loan could put the RN in default, Mr. Saint-Just replied that the creditor had "no interest in continuing in this way since he sees that it is reimbursed".

Already indebted and "in significant cumulative losses" according to its treasurer, the RN must also reimburse this year, on the annual public aid to the RN (about 5.5 million euros), 4.2 million euros at the Cotelec microparty from FN co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. The latter had loaned 6 million euros to the party for the 2017 presidential campaign.

- Closed accounts -

After the 2017 elections, the RN was saved by a loan - reimbursed since - of nearly 8 million euros from a French businessman very established in Africa, Laurent Foucher, according to Mediapart. But "questions remain unanswered about the origin of the funds," according to the news site.

The RN was also weakened in 2018 by a judicial seizure, on annual public aid, of 2 million euros (reduced to 1 million), in the case of alleged fictitious jobs in the European Parliament. The judges feared that the aid would only serve to repay loans and be unavailable to recover possible damages in this case.

The French state also claims nearly 11.6 million euros in damages for suspicion of fraud and misuse of corporate assets in the funding of its campaign for the legislative elections in 2012.

The RN, whose accounts had been closed for reasons unexplained by the Societe Generale in the fall of 2017, explains that its financial difficulties are due to the election expenses that the party must incur given the refusal of the banks to lend it the money.

Since laws of September 2017, political parties in France can no longer borrow money from non-European banks or from another state.

© 2020 AFP