No legal let up seen as French candidates face investigation
paris — France’s presidential frontrunners Francois Fillon and far-right leader Marine Le Pen can expect no pause in legal investigations targeting them ahead of elections in April, the justice minister said on Sunday.
The independence and neutrality of the justice system is under scrutiny ahead of a two-stage presidential election only nine weeks away amid several high-profile probes into Fillon and Le Pen.
Both are accused of misusing public money by using fake parliamentary aides, while Le Pen faces a separate investigation into the funding of election campaigns in 2014 and 2015.
They deny wrong-doing and have sought to portray the investigations as politically-motivated attacks which should be delayed or abandoned altogether.
“Imagine that during the presidential campaign you can’t investigate?” Justice Minister JeanJacques Urvoas told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.
He said that in the past judges had sometimes taken into account the electoral calendar when fixing trial dates, but that judicial investigations
To imagine that investigations could have been ordered on Fillon or Marine Le Pen is completely absurd because it’s illegal Jean-Jacques Urvoas, French justice minister
had never been put on ice.
“There is no law allowing a suspension like that. What would be the reason? In the name of what exception? In my opinion, nothing could justify it,” he said.
He again denied accusations that Socialist President Francois Hollande was behind the investigations as has been alleged by Fillon, whose campaign has been thrown into turmoil by the case.
“To imagine that investigations could have been ordered on Fillon or Marine Le Pen is completely absurd because it’s illegal,” he added. Polls currently show anti-EU, antiimmigrant Le Pen winning the first round of the two-stage election on April 23, with either Fillon or centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron coming second. In a run-off vote on May 7 between the top two candidates, Le Pen would lose to both of her rivals if the vote were held today, polls show. On Saturday, legal sources told AFP that a confidant of Le Pen has been charged with making an illegal loan to her farright National Front party.
Le Pen’s personal assistant Catherine Griset was charged on Wednesday with breach of trust in a probe into allegations the party defrauded the European Parliament of about 340,000 euros . Fillon faces a fraught two months ahead of the vote after French prosecutors’ decided on Friday to launch a full judicial inquiry into claims he paid his family for fake parliamentary jobs. —