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French far right party fined €18k in election spending case

A criminal court in Paris fined Marine Le Pen's National Front €18,750 on Tuesday after convicting the far-right party for misuse of assets during the 2012 parliamentary elections.

Published: 16 June 2020 17:45 CEST

French far right party fined €18k in election spending case

Marine Le Pen's party was convicted over the 2012 election. Photo: AFP

A European MP for the party, since renamed the Rassemblement National (National Rally), and a close associate of Le Pen also received jail terms for fraud.

The party was however acquitted of taking part in a fraudulent scheme to overcharge candidates for party election leaflets that were in turn refunded by the state.

The scheme obliged each candidate standing for election for the Front National in 2012 to buy an election kit consisting of campaign material, such as posters and leaflets, from a micro-party linked to the central party.

The ready-made kit cost €16,650 but an investigation found that the true cost of the material was €4,000. That was a large profit-margin for the makers, a company called Riwal run by an old friend of Marine Le Pen, Frederic Chatillon, who was handed the ten-month prison sentence.

European MP Jean-Francois Jalkh, legal expert for the party, received six months and a five year election ban for the part he played in the scheme.

The micro-party was fined €300,000 half of which is suspended.

The French state was claiming €11.6 million in damages and prosecutors had demanded a fine of €500,000 against Le Pen's party.

The party was acquitted, as judges said they could find no evidence of “fraudulent manoeuvres”.

But the ex-Front National was found guilty of benefitting from fiscal advantages provided by Riwal, such as a loan of several million euros without interest over the course of three years.

Marine Le Pen has sought to rebrand the French far-right in a bid to attract wider support and is again seen as the main rival to incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 elections.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.