France’s far-right leader Le Pen guilty of embezzlement in ruling that could end her career

Ask sarkozy

Damn, that's good. Thanks!

Ohh edgy

Yeah. It was reconstruction where we never held the south to account for their treasonous actions.

Lol of course not. She'll be right back in five years. And people will vote for her again.

The French know what’s up. As per usual.

Wait, y’all can just convict a right-wing political figure and like, get rid of them? Forever?

Maybe. We'll see if this is a real prosecution or just French Mueller Time.

I... I didn't know you could do that.

Classic right wing thinking means that for them, the morally righteous can do no wrong, so convictions of embezzlement don't matter. Laws are there only to punish the undeserving, meaning everyone not in the in-group.

Same way Trump's "political aspirations" need to be ended

Nah, being convicted is for minorities and the poor.

That said, I'm not sure if she's rich so maybe?

4 years. Let's see how it plays out.

Ma Lutte?

Sounds like a medieval guitar.

The appropriate reaction would be to ban them for being fucking fascists, not for some incidental crime they happened to commit.

Well, she still committed financial fraud. It's more the judiciary doing its job. Sarkozy was also convicted after his presidency.

"Embezzlement," how quaint!

She's not your average conservative. She's an actual fascist -- linked with Orbán, Trump, Meloni, received millions from Putin, and her party was formed by and still includes numerous nazis, regardless of her rebranding efforts. This goes both for the founding members and the current recruits.

Oooo I love Fricko

Fantastic news even!

Mate, I'm Portuguese, living in Portugal right now and let me tell you that whilst I agree with you that Portugal is a pretty corrupt place, it's far better now that it used to be back before 2009 when the first government minister ever was convicted and imprisioned for corruption.

(20 years ago nobody would have even found out that our last Prime Minister's family paid over €700k for real estate using money he had not declared to the transparency comission as having earned - not least because there was no such things as transparency legislation - much less the government falling because of it)

Outside the countries were Corruption is such a widespread and everyday thing that it can't be denied (so, the kind of place were it's normal to pay the police not to give you a fine for a traffic infraction or are expected to pay somebody at the city hall if you want to ever be issued a permit for something), the most corrupt places are places like the US and UK (the latter of which were I lived for over a decade) where the system is designed so that they won't even investigate, much less prosecute and convict anybody who is "important" for Corruption and if any such people are publicly accused of Corruption the Justice System comes down hard on the accusers for Libel or even Harassment.

There is this interesting paradox in the perception of corruption (and hence in things like the Corruption Perception Index) that when the Justice System starts going after high level politicians for corruption, people think Corruption is going up (because it gets so much coverage in the news), when in fact Corruption is going down because some crooks are getting arrested and the rest get scared (not least because when high level types get jailed, the highest level politicians who can get millions with corrupt practices that affect an entire country, stop thinking that they have de facto immunity)

Meanwhile, in the countries with purposefully designed to be innefective "anti"-corruption systems (the UK being a perfect example, with the entire responsability for fighting corruption AND fraud, from investigation to prosecution in the entire country, being the responsability of a single entity in the Justice System - the Serious Fraud Office - who have less budget than a small city hall) alongside nasty "honor/image defending" legislation to fend off any accusations of corruption - so only those convicted for Corruption can be publicly accused of being corrupt and the system is setup so that nobody but the small fry ever gets convicted for Corruption - are the one's with the most "strange" pieces of legislation and ministerial orders that clearly help certain sectors and even specific companies and really high rates of politicians ending up multi-millionaires via things like work-one-day-a-month very highly paid non-executive board memberships in private companies and/or getting hundreds or thousands per-speech in the speech circuit, and yet people generally think the country is very clean because you literally never see any high level politician end up in the news for Corruption.

Even in cases like this justice must not just be done, but be seen to be done. It seems her guilt has been established, which is good; her sentencing comes next. It seem unlikely that there are any mitigating circumstances to reduce the punishment, but that judgement must be seen to be fair. The French citizenry are not renouned for their forebearance in the face of injustice, so I would be tempted to trust their system for now.

ETA: In fact, it seems like the punishment has already been decreed: five years ineligibility to run for office, four years in prison (two suspended), and a fine. That puts her out of tbe running for president, and likely tarnishes her enough to keep her down even after 2030.

The prison sentence kicks in after appeals have been made. 2 years, plus 2 suspended.

It's also not unknown/uncommon for people to be let free for a few days. It lets them put their affairs in order, before serving their time. It tends to be applied to those with a very low flight risk however, with significant affairs, so mainly the rich.

5 years ineligibility means she can't run for president in 2027 or for another MP seat. It means others will take over and gain visibility over her.

And 2 years in prison is going to cook her career prospects too.

She isn't going to prison. Electronic tag because, you know, rules for thee ...