Le Pen under investigation: Manhunt or new scandal?

French police raided the headquarters of Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) yesterday over alleged irregularities in campaign financing.

Party president Jordan Bardella said it was a new campaign against the far-right party, Reuters reported.

The raid dealt a fresh blow to the RN, which is still recovering from Le Pen's conviction in March for embezzling EU funds and being barred from running in the 2027 election. The European Court of Human Rights yesterday rejected Le Pen's request to intervene and suspend her five-year ban.

The RN has become the single strongest parliamentary party in France, but remains toxic to many due to its past marked by anti-Semitism and racism.

The party has also struggled to clear itself of accusations of financial mismanagement during its rise from a marginal, once-hated party to one of the most powerful political forces in France.

The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed the raids, saying they were linked to an investigation launched last week against an unnamed person, following several reports from institutional sources. The raids were reportedly carried out at the RN headquarters, as well as at the headquarters of several unnamed companies and the homes of their executives.

The investigation concerns election loans that, according to prosecutors, were allegedly issued illegally and in amounts that exceeded legal limits, between 2020 and 2024, Reuters reported.

The alleged violations relate to campaign financing during the 2022 presidential election, the parliamentary election of the same year and the 2024 European Parliament election, prosecutors said. They added that no one has been charged so far and that the investigation is still ongoing.

A day earlier, in a separate case, European finance prosecutors opened an investigation into the alleged misuse of 4,3 million euros by the now-disbanded right-wing bloc in the European Parliament “Identity and Democracy”, of which RN was a part.

Le Pen, who has denied any wrongdoing in the fraud case, is seeking to overturn the March ruling so she can run in the 2027 election, which would be her fourth attempt at the top job. But Bardella has said he will run if she is unable to.

The European Court of Human Rights' decision to reject Le Pen's application is a further blow to the far-right leader, who has long been a critic of the court. The court said it rejected the application because it did not consider that French judges had caused "irreparable harm to a right protected" by human rights law by barring her from running.

Le Pen argued that being banned from running in the 2027 elections would risk a serious and irreparable violation of her rights, as well as the rights of voters.