Paris (AFP)
Florian Philippot, ex-right-hand man of Marine Le Pen and now president of the "Patriots", was placed on Thursday under the status of assisted witness after being heard in the judicial information on the assistants of FN deputies, learned the AFP with his lawyer.
Mr. Philippot, summoned Thursday for an indictment, "benefits from the status of assisted witness, following all the elements provided and exposed during this day" to the examining magistrates in charge of the case, congratulated his lawyer Me Dominique Inchauspé, contacted by AFP.
The regional councilor did not respond to requests from AFP.
The day before, Joffrey Bollée, regional councilor of Île-de-France and one of his parliamentary assistants when Mr. Philippot was an MEP, had also been summoned for examination and finally placed by the judges under this statute assisted witness intermediary, confirmed Me Inchauspé to AFP.
The investigating magistrates suspect the RN and its leaders of having set up "in a concerted and deliberate manner" a "system of diversion" of the envelopes allocated by the EU to each deputy to remunerate parliamentary collaborators, in order to allow the party to save on wages.
The survey targets 17 deputies and the contracts of around forty employees for damage assessed by the European Parliament at 6.8 million euros between 2009 and 2017, over two terms.
In this case, around 25 indictments were pronounced, including that of Marine Le Pen, president of the RN, for "embezzlement of public funds" or "complicity" in this crime.
She is accused of having "given instructions" so that MEPs hire as assistants people "actually holding jobs" at the FN, at the party headquarters in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) near Paris.
His father, the ex-president of the FN Jean-Marie Le Pen, the new mayor of Perpignan, Louis Aliot, or even the treasurer of the Wallerand party of Saint-Just, were also indicted for "embezzlement of public funds" or complicity.
The party has also been indicted in this case.
© 2020 AFP