EU court denies Le Pen heirs' appeal to evade repaying misused funds
The Court's judgement stated that an appeal by former European Parliament member Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughters was denied because "no evidence of use of the appropriations in accordance with the applicable regulations has been provided."
The "appropriations" refers to money allegedly used illegally by Jean-Marie Le Pen during the 2009-2014 European parliamentary term.
Le Pen had used the funds under the Parliament's budget line 400, which covers "the administrative and operational expenditure" of parliamentary expenses.
However, Le Pen instead purportedly put the funding toward personal expenses and was fined around $371,000 by the European Parliament in 2016, who then started in May of that year to withhold over $8000 monthly from him.
Le Pen died in January, and his daughters sought to annul the EU's decision to recover their father's expenses from them, and instead have their debt canceled and paid for by the Parliament.
Nonetheless, the court decided that since Le Pen never "demonstrated that the costs for which he had requested to be covered from the appropriations allocated under Parliament's budget line 400 were in accordance with the regulations relating to this budget line," that the money must be recovered.
In a press release, the Court said Wednesday that it "holds that the procedure which led the Parliament to adopt the recovery decision and to issue the debit note is not contrary to the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations."
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