Jean-Marie Le Pen under investigation – Le Point

The national financial prosecutor on Monday opened a tax fraud money laundering investigation on suspicion of a hidden bank account to abroad who could belong to Jean-Marie Le Pen, which he denies, told AFP Tuesday judicial source. In late April, the news website Mediapart revealed a report of the financial intelligence unit Tracfin evoking a trust managed in Geneva, including the beneficiary would be the personal assistant of Jean-Marie Le Pen. According to this notification, the trust account abounded include a € 2.2 million, including 1.7 in the form of ingots and gold coins. Contacted by AFP Tuesday, Jean-Marie Le Pen has denied any involvement in a trust abroad. “I deny it. This is not because Mediapart said something that’s a gospel truth, “he said.

In his report, Tracfin evokes the existence of a trust based in the Islands British virgin and managed in Geneva on behalf of Gerald Gerin, the personal assistant of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a source close to the matter told AFP. According to this source, the account was closed in 2014 and the money transferred to a bank in the Bahamas. “All these elements should be audited,” said the source close to the file.

“I have nothing to say”

“I have nothing to say “on this case, said for his part Gerald Gerin, contacted by AFP. Very close to Jean-Marie Le Pen, he accompanies her wherever Gerald Gerin also appears as the treasurer of his microparti, Cotelec. At the European Parliament he is the assistant of MEP Marie-Christine arnautu, also very close to the former president of the FN is now suspended from the extreme right party.

A previous investigation by the Paris prosecutor was already the heritage of Jean-Marie Le Pen and enrichment of 1.1 million euros between 2004 and 2009, years of beginning and end of one of his European parliamentary mandates. This procedure, in which the question of limitation may arise, is now associated with the investigation of the national financial prosecutor, said the judicial source.

Jean-Marie Le Pen had admitted in 2013 having held open an account in Switzerland at UBS in 1981, a case already mentioned in the past. He then spoke of a loan operation for the time of his record company, the SERPs.