Prosecutors look into EU anti-fraud report on Le Pen

PARIS－French prosecutors said on Sunday that they are examining a report by the European Union's anti-fraud agency accusing far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and members of her party of misappropriating thousands of euros worth of EU funds.

Le Pen is challenging Emmanuel Macron in a presidential election with opinion polls showing Macron edging ahead in next Sunday's runoff.

The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed that it was studying a report it received from the EU anti-fraud agency OLAF on March 11.

The European Parliament said on Sunday it will try to recover money owed by Le Pen over these fraud allegations.

Investigative journal Mediapart wrote on Saturday that the OLAF report claimed Le Pen had misappropriated 140,000 euros ($151,100) of public money, with party members diverting 617,000 euros in total. None have been accused of profiting directly, but of claiming EU funds for staff and event expenses.

Le Pen's office could not be immediately reached for comment.

"The French will not be fooled by attempts of the European Union and the European institutions (...) to interfere in the presidential campaign and harm Marine Le Pen," National Rally President Jordan Bardella told Europe 1 radio.

He said his party had filed two legal complaints against OLAF, and that it would be filing a third in response to the report.

Speaking to BFM TV, Le Pen's lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said his client denied the charges. He said she has yet to be questioned, and neither he nor Le Pen has seen the OLAF report.

Le Pen has been under investigation since 2017 as part of a probe into the alleged misuse of EU funds to pay parliamentary assistants.

This comes as the two remaining contenders in the presidential race return to the fray on Monday after a brief Easter pause in campaigning and ahead of a high-stakes televised debate.

Macron and Le Pen both have low-key meetings on Monday, pacing themselves until Wednesday's faceoff, which could turn out to be the key to the campaign.

The latest opinion polls still suggest Macron has the edge, giving him scores of between 53 and 55.5 percent to Le Pen's 44.5 to 47 percent.

No room for complacency

Allowing for margins of error, Macron knows there is no room for complacency ahead of this Sunday's second-round vote.

Le Pen, too, knows what is at stake.

But results of a survey on Sunday carried out by Jean-Luc Melenchon, the third-placed radical-left presidential candidate, will give Macron food for thought.

Melenchon garnered 7.7 million votes in the first round－nearly 22 percent of the total. Of his 215,292 supporters surveyed, however, only a third intended to back Macron in the second round.

The rest preferred to return a blank or spoiled ballot paper, or just not vote at all.

Melenchon himself, rather than explicitly endorsing Macron, has simply called for "not a single vote for Le Pen".

Christophe Castaner, leader of Macron's Republic on the Move group in parliament, played down the significance of the survey.

"Not to choose, is to accept you are playing Russian roulette," he warned.

Agencies via Xinhua