National Front seeks Russian cash for election fight

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Marine Le Pen’s National Front asked Russia for a €27 million loan to help it fight presidential and parliamentary elections in 2017, the party’s treasurer said.

The French far-right party is notoriously strapped for cash as French banks refuse to lend it money, Wallerand de Saint-Just, the National Front’s treasurer, said.

“The party is applying to foreign banks … and why not Russian ones,” Saint-Just said.

Le Pen denied that financing from a Russian-owned bank would influence the party’s policies. In 2014, her party secured an €11 million loan from the Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank.

There were claims that Le Pen was given the loan as a “reward” for backing Vladimir Putin’s stance on Crimea. The accusation was made in April 2015, when a group of Russian hackers leaked text messages from a smartphone allegedly belonging to Timur Prokopenko, the head of the Kremlin internal affairs department, in which the support of the French far-right leader was discussed. She denied the claims.

The €27 million loan request comes after French police raided the National Front party offices near Paris on Wednesday as part of a probe into suspicions that the party is using assistants paid by the European Parliament for political work in France.

http://www.politico.eu/article/le-pen-russia-crimea-putin-money-bank-national-front-seeks-russian-cash-for-election-fight/