Marine Le Pen obtained a loan of 10.6 million euros from a Hungarian bank for presidential campaign

The national rally candidate had alerted Emmanuel Macron to the funding difficulties of the presidential campaign in September.

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In 2014, the National Front turned to Russia of Vladimir Putin to get a controversial bank loan. Eight years later, it is in Hungary that the national gathering candidate (ex-Fn), Marine Le Pen, was able to obtain a loan of 10.6 million euros from a Hungarian bank to finance his Presidential Campaign, According to RTL information confirmed in the world, Wednesday 2 February, by the far-right party.

The staff of M me Le Pen refuses to say more, on the pretext of a “confidentiality clause”, which forbids him in particular to give the name of the establishment . Party leaders refused to tell RTL if Viktor Orban, the Illiberal Hungarian Prime Minister had played the facilitators. Marine Le Pen is in close contact with him: she had found her, especially on Saturday, in Madrid for a meeting of European sovereignist parties, and he had invited her to Budapest in October 2021.

“Turning. funding rules “

A few days ago the far-right party said she had obtained a loan of 10.6 million euros “from a European bank,” said the president of the RN , Jordan Bardella. “This loan obtained, you know, in a very difficult context of hardening the financing rules of the campaigns and crissuality of banks to finance the democratic life of our country will allow us to tackle the last straight line of the campaign” , had written by e-mail Mr. Bardella and the Treasurer of the Party, Kevin Pfeffer, in an e-mail message to their troops.

The loan will contribute in particular to fund the Reims Convention, Saturday, February 5, as well as an operation “5,000 markets” with buses that crisscross the country, and public meetings, for a “closest campaign”. French, without excess, but with the spirit released from the constraints of the search for funds “, they emphasize.

Le Pen had” alerted “Macron

In September 2021, Marine Le Pen had “alerted” in a letter President Emmanuel Macron on the funding difficulties of the presidential campaign. “Many potential candidates in the presidential election, some representatives of important currents, find themselves faced with almost impossibility to find funding” with banks, had alerted the national rally candidate. While since 2017, candidates can no longer borrow money from non-European banks, Marine Le Pen had asked Macron to “seize the Parliament very quickly to open up new financing opportunities for election campaigns and allow a healthy democratic debate “.

Very indebted, the RN has, for several years, has a hard time financed with banks. For the 2017 campaign, he borrowed six million euros at Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Micro-Parte Cotelec, and eight million euros to a businessman, Laurent Foucher. The party then lent these sums to the candidate Marine Le Pen. In 2014, for the regional elections and the departmental, the far-right party had used a Russian loan of nine million euros, which it is still repaying, following a “rescheduling” obtained in 2020 with of its creditors, a Russian firm led by former military, Aviazaphast.

/Media reports.