French Far-Right Party Raided in Expanding Finance Probe

On July 9th, French police raided the Paris headquarters of the far-right National Rally (RN) party as a part of a growing criminal investigation into alleged illegal campaign financing. About 20 officers from the financial crimes brigade searched the RN’s offices and found internal documents, emails and accounting records. "RN headquarters—including the offices of its leaders—are being searched by about 20 police officers from the financial brigade," RN party President Jordan Bardella wrote on social media.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that the raid was part of an investigation that was launched in 2023. The probe centers around suspicions that the party violated campaign finance laws during the 2022 and 2024 elections. Prosecutors are investigating whether National Rally candidates and party officials used “illegal loans from individuals” to fund campaigns and submitted “inflated or fake invoices” to claim a larger reimbursement from the French state. Under French election law, parties receive public funds proportionate to their electoral performance. This creates incentives for campaign overspending or falsified billing.

In addition to party headquarters, French authorities conducted simultaneous searches of the homes and offices of company executives connected to RN’s campaign vendors. Police are examining whether certain firms overcharged for campaign services or issued fake invoices for services that did not occur. This would enable illegal financing channels to inflate campaign resources.

The prosecutor’s statement included possible offenses such as “fraud, aggravated money laundering, forgery, and use of forged documents” between 2020 and 2024. While no formal charges have been confirmed yet, the scale of the police operation demonstrates a serious escalation in the financial skepticism and investigation of France’s most prominent far-right party.

RN President Bardella sharply criticized the raids, saying that they were politically motivated. He described the search as “a spectacular and unprecedented operation,” and suggested that the judiciary is being weaponized against the far-right before legislative negotiations. Bardella further claimed that the operation was “part of a new harassment campaign,” claiming that the National Rally is being unfairly targeted by French institutions.

The raid comes just weeks after the party’s former leader, Marine Le Pen, was convicted in April of 2025 for embezzling public EU funds. The Paris Criminal Court found that Le Pen and senior aides had misused European Parliament budgets by hiring “four fictitious assistants” between 2004 and 2016. She was sentenced to a two-year suspended prison term, fined €200,000 and barred from holding public office for five years.

On the same day as the headquarters raid, the European Court of Human Rights rejected Le Pen’s emergency appeal to suspend the ban, ruling that there was “no imminent risk of irreparable harm” to her civil or political rights. This decision was detrimental to her hopes of reentering politics before France’s next presidential election.

The National Rally, previously the National Front, has long had legal scrutiny over its finances. In 2017, a separate fraud case revealed that the party had misused European parliamentary funds, and the party was ordered to repay over €300,000. This most recent investigation represents a broader institutional effort to examine whether the party’s seemingly successful rise has relied on unlawful financial practices.

Although the RN won the most seats in the first round of France’s 2025 parliamentary elections, the party did not achieve a majority after a left-wing coalition came through in the runoffs. Bardella’s ambitions to become prime minister are now put off, but the party remains a dominant force in French politics.

Whether this new legal issue will damage RN’s political momentum is not confirmed and is still being debated. But for now, the party’s internal operations, funding structures and alliances are under a legal microscope, and the stakes are high.

Extemp Analysis by: Lindsey Zhao

Question: Will recent financial investigations into the National Rally hurt their electoral chances in 2027? 

AGD: A joke about how many times the RN has been investigated for money issues would be pretty funny here.

Background: should mention the several waves of financial investigations, from the one that convicted Marine le Pen to the most recent raids on RN offices, and French officials’ reasons for conducting these raids. 

Answer: Yes, turn away moderates

3 Points

1. damaging their most appealing candidates

   1. financial investigations could result in serious consequences for the most high-profile RN politicians 

      1. ex: 4 year prison sentence for Marine le Pen and an effective ban on running for office in 2027

      2. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/inside-the-growing-judicial-cloud-over-frances-far-right-party/ 

   2. it has been difficult to find candidates to replace these politicians who are as popular/charismatic/effective, hurting the RN’s electability among moderates who vote for them for that reason

2. hurting financial credibility 

1. big part of RN is advertising ability (esp on social media like Facebook): able to successfully rebrand itself from a dangerous fringe party to a mainstream, electable one

   1. https://www.liberties.eu/en/stories/elections-monitoring-france/45213 

2. Strict campaign finance laws in France make (some) banks very wary of loaning to sus actors like the RN, forcing the RN to seek methods of alternative financing since French banks routinely refuse them credit. An even worse reputation regarding the misuse of campaign funds could worsen this problem and impact their ability to influence public opinion/views through targeted advertising

   1. https://www.politico.eu/article/french-far-right-billionaire-interrogated-in-probe-into-le-pen-partys-campaign-financing/ 

     3) revealing links to billionaires

3. far-right billionaires are being investigated too: https://www.politico.eu/article/french-far-right-billionaire-interrogated-in-probe-into-le-pen-partys-campaign-financing/ 

4. 76% of French people are in favour of reinstating the solidarity wealth tax, showing that many (esp moderates) disapprove of the disproportionate wealth/power that billionaires hold

   1. https://350.org/press-release/louvre-protest-puts-bernard-arnault-in-spotlight-with-demand-for-wealth-tax/ 

General substructure is mostly expectation verification. If each point is a reason why the investigations will hurt the RN, then within each point you need these: a) how the investigations reveal something about that reason and b) why French voters (in this case, moderates) will care about that reason. 

Read more here: 

• Jon Henley, The Guardian

• Angela Charlton, PBS

• Assma Maad, Le Monde

• Alexander Smith, NBC