€40m of Russian cash will allow Marine Le Pen’s Front National to take advantage of rivals’ woes in upcoming regional and presidential elections
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Version 0 of 1. The financial and political firepower of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN) is to be transformed by a €40m (£32m) loan from a bank with links to the Kremlin, it has been alleged. Ms Le Pen confirmed earlier this week that a Russian bank was lending her cash-strapped, far-right party €9m. This is part of a growing pattern of connections between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and far-right and Europhobic parties in the European Union. Ms Le Pen dismissed as “fantasy” a report that the €9m was the first instalment of loans totalling €40m which will allow her to mount an unbridled challenge to France’s mainstream parties in regional elections next year and presidential elections in 2017. However, other senior FN officials told the investigative website Mediapart that there was an agreement that the First Czech-Russian Bank would provide most of the party’s funding needs up to the presidential election in 30 months’ time. “A first instalment has been agreed of a €40m loan,” a member of the party’s political bureau told Mediapart. “The €9m has arrived. Another €31m will follow.” The smaller €9m loan has caused consternation in France (Getty Images) The €40m represents eight times the present annual budget of the Front National.Bernard Monot, an FN MEP and economic adviser to Ms Le Pen, said that an understanding had been reached with the Russian bank rather than a firm deal. The FN had “expressed a global financing requirement” of €45m up to the presidential election, he said. “We are taking it step by step. The details will be sorted out as we go along.” Even the smaller €9m loan – confirmed by Ms Le Pen – has caused consternation in France and in other European capitals. The state-controlled media in Russia habitually attacks the Ukrainian government as run by “neo-Nazis”. At the same time, Moscow has been building strong political – and allegedly financial – links with hard-right, nationalist parties all over the EU. There have been unconfirmed allegations in the United States that Moscow is funding the virulently xenophobic Hungarian party Jobbik and the avowedly neo-Nazi Greek party, Golden Dawn. A discussion paper from a Putin-supporting Moscow think-tank, leaked to the German press this week, urged the Kremlin to find ways of funding other Europhobic parties such as the emerging Alternative for Germany (AfD). The admiration of hard-line nationalist parties for Mr Putin is not only based on money. The Kremlin has gone out of its way to establish friendly ties with European political parties that share its view of the European Union as a meddlesome, US-controlled enemy of national sovereignty and destroyer of traditional religious and family values. The loans take Moscow’s attempt to influence the internal politics of the EU to a new level (Getty Images) There have been no suggestions of Russian money going to Ukip, but its leader Nigel Farage described Mr Putin earlier this year as the world leader that he “admired most”. Ms Le Pen, who has made two visits to Moscow in 18 months, says that Mr Putin is a “defender of the Christian heritage of European civilisation”. The loans by a Russian bank to the FN – even the confirmed €9m loan – take Moscow’s attempt to influence the internal politics of the EU to a new level. Ms Le Pen’s Front National is arguably the most powerful hard-right party in Europe. Both the centre-left and centre-right mainstream parties in France are discredited and unpopular. Opinion polls suggest that the FN could seize control of at least two French regional governments for the first time next year. There is little likelihood that Marine Le Pen could become the next French president in 2017 but, as things stand, she seems certain to reach the two-candidate second round. The great obstacle to the advance of Ms Le Pen’s cleaned-up version of the FN has been money. Poor election results by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in his final years as FN leader in 2007-11 left the party with debts estimated at over €20m. The FN had to sell its party headquarters in the posh Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud in 2010 and move into modest rented offices. There is little likelihood that Marine Le Pen could become the next French president in 2017 (Getty Images) Most of the party’s annual €5m budget comes from public subsidies based on performance in national and local elections. The subsidies are paid in arrears. French parties take out loans to fight elections and then repay them from their public grants. Ms Le Pen complained this week that it was “scandalous” that no French bank would provide loans to the FN, despite the party’s success in the local and European elections this year. She said that there was nothing political about the Russian loans. The FN had approached banks in several countries. Only the Russian bank had delivered. “We tried in Spain, Italy, the United States, Asia and Russia,” she said. “We grabbed the first offer that we got.” It was “insulting”, she said, to suggest that a party that idolises national sovereignty should have “sold” its support to Moscow. The FN had been pro-Putin for several years, she pointed out. Under French law it is illegal for foreign governments or individuals to give money to political candidates. This does not apply to loans. There were calls for the law to be strengthened. A Socialist member of parliament, Razzy Hammadi, is to propose a new law to prevent politicians from borrowing outside the eurozone. “How can a party… approach debates about foreign policy and strategy from a neutral standpoint, if it is financed by foreign banks?” he asked. |