Police raid office of National Rally party as part of anti-corruption probe

French police raided the headquarters of far-right party National Rally on Wednesday, seizing documents and accounting records, the party’s leader said, as part of a campaign finance inquiry.

Prosecutors are investigating allegations of illegal financing of Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential bid, and European Parliament and French parliamentary campaigns.

Jordan Bardella, 29, who took over presidency of the popular party in 2022, said that police seized “all files relating to the party’s recent regional, presidential, legislative, and European campaigns — in other words, all of its electoral activity”.

Mr Bardella slammed the raid in a message on X. “This spectacular and unprecedented operation is clearly part of a new harassment operation. It is a serious attack on pluralism and democratic change,” he said.

Associated Press journalists saw police activity outside the party’s headquarters in Paris.

The raid came after Le Pen – the party’s former leader and runner-up to incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 – was convicted of embezzlement in April. She and 24 other party officials were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, violating the 27-nation bloc’s regulations.

But Wednesday’s raid stems from a different, more recent case.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement to the AP that searches were carried out at the National Rally’s headquarters, at the headquarters of unidentified companies and at the homes of people leading those companies.

The searches were prompted by a judicial inquiry opened a year ago into a raft of allegations, including fraud, money laundering and forgery, the prosecutor’s office said.

The inquiry aims to determine whether Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign, and the party’s campaigns for European Parliament in 2024 and French parliamentary elections in 2022 were financed by “illegal loans from individuals for the benefit of the party or National Rally candidates”, the statement said.

The inquiry is also investigating allegations that the National Rally overbilled for services or billed for fictitious services in order to artificially augment the amount of state aid provided to the party for its electoral campaigns.

The prosecutor’s office says no one has been charged in the case.