The French Police raid to a national rally, urged outrage from the party leader

The mast of France’s national rally party has accused authorities of New Bullying Campaign after police attacked its headquarters investigating his campaign finance.

Party President Jordan Bardela said “the spectacular and unprecedented operation” is a “serious attack on pluralism and democratic change.”

Prosecutors said they were investigating potential acts of “fraud against public figures” and alleged violations involving loans and donations during election campaigns in 2022 and 2024.

Wallerand de Saint-Just, the former party cashier, said the national rally (RN) did nothing wrong.

“This process that seems completely unacceptable and outrageous. We are persecuted daily,” he told reporters outside the Paris party headquarters.

“All our campaign accounts have been approved and restored.”

Despite a series of legal failures, RN is forthcoming in the studies of French public opinion, and Bardela, his 29-year-old president, has led a recent poll as the most popular political figure in the country.

Earlier this year, RN Marine Le Pen leader was convicted by the French court to assist the European Union’s funds. She was forbidden to run for an office for five years, in a blow to her ambitions to run for the Presidency for the fourth time.

She appealed the sentence she sentenced as a “witch hunt”, but last month she accepted that she might have to hand over her young lieutenant’s stick before the presidential vote in 2027.

Bardela was not present during the police attack, as he attended a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, but he said 20 financial brigades had used demand as a justification for the seizure of internal party documents and the attack on their office.

There was no immediate comment from Le Pen.

Police also invaded the main offices of several companies and their bosses.

The raids were linked by the Parisian prosecutors with an investigation, which was started just a year ago for accusations of misappropriation, forgery and fraud, centered on the Le Pen Party party.

Prosecutors said on Wednesday that the investigation should determine whether the party’s presidential and parliamentary election campaign in 2022 and its European election campaign in 2024 were funded by “illegal payments by persons who benefit from the party or candidates for national rally.

They said they would also study whether the increased or fictitious invoices were presented as a campaign cost that should be paid by the state.

RN said the allegations of illegal funding for the campaign were based on the fact that no French bank was ready to help funding. Previously, she provided loans from banks in Russia and Hungary.

In another failure for the national rally, the European Union Prosecutor’s Office has officially launched an investigation this week for a former political group in the European Parliament, in which RN was part.

Identity and democracy were terminated last year and was suspected of abusing parliament’s financing. RN is now part of the Patriots for Europe Group, which includes distant parties from Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Portugal.

Bardela said on Tuesday that the investigation was “a new harassment operation from the European Parliament”.