France’s National Rally targeted as part of Europe-wide raids over alleged far-right embezzlement

Submission statement: Another suspicion of embezzlement scheme conducted by the European far-right lead to an unprecedented EU-wide series of police searches in Paris, Rome and Madrid to collect evidence for the ongoing investigations.

The investigation is unrelated to the National Front's fake job scheme that ran from 2004 to 2016 for an estimated €2.9 million in embezzled funds and lead to a string of convictions for the far-right party's leaders, including a four-year prison term and a five-year ban from holding office for Marine Le Pen, the thrice-candidate for the presidency who is expecting her appeal ruling next week.

The current investigation focuses on €4.3 million of "unduly perceived funds" by the defunct far-right party in the European Parliament Identity and Democracy (ID) that existed between 2019 and 2024 and comprised France's National Rally (RN), Italy's Lega, Germany's AfD or Austria's FPÖ, before it splintered between Patriots for Europe (RN-Lega led) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (AfD-led) following AfD's exclusion for apologia of the SS.

According to journalists' investigations from several European outlets (Le Monde, Die Zeit, Kontraste, Falter) [paywalled], Identity and Democracy is accused of having misappropriated the funds allocated by the European Parliament to cover the operational costs of their group in order to irrigate companies owned by their friends without going through the appropriate calls for tender, while inflating bills in the process.

According to the investigation, only two companies received €3.1 million in embezzled funds from the National Rally, belonging to the "GUD Connexion", a network of PR/communications companies owned by a handful of members of the Groupe Union Défense, a neofascist militia that was formally dissolved by the French government in 2025 after numerous incidents of violence targeting racial and sexual minorities.

The GUD was ruled for years by Frédéric Chatillon, a very close ally of Marine Le Pen known for his neo-Nazi views and his close ties to the defunct al-Assad regime and Hezbollah. Chatillon's PR company Unanime – formerly Edda, named after Mussolin's elder daughter – benefitted from ID's illicit contracts to the tune of €1.43 million.

Jordan Bardella, who serves as Patriots for Europe's chairman and president of the National Rally and is expected to run as RN's candidate in 2027 if Le Pen's ban from office is upheld, denounced a "new harassment operation by the European Parliament". Bardella is also targeted by a separate legal procedure in France launched by an anti-corruption NGO accusing him of having held a fake job at the European Parliament and forged documents for a four-month period in 2015 where no evidence of his work could be found.