Marine Le Pen, figurehead of France’s Rassemblement National (RN), one of the most established far-right parties in Europe, has been found guilty of embezzling funds from the European parliament.
During her time as an MEP between 2004 and 2017, Le Pen and her team paid party staff with funds that should have gone to European parliamentary aides. The ruling estimates that a total of €2.9 million (£2.4 million) in European parliament funds were involved in the crimes and that Le Pen personally embezzled €474,000 of that total.
She has been sentenced to four years in prison, two of which would be electronic monitoring. She is also unlikely to see the inside of a cell for the other two years as she is appealing her conviction.
