THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT will shortly begin taking money from the salary of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen to recover funds paid to a party assistant, a parliamentary source has said.

Le Pen, one of the front-runners in upcoming French presidential polls, had until midnight last night to repay nearly €300,000($325,000) but she bluntly rejected the demand just before the deadline.

The European Parliament says Le Pen, who is also an MEP as well as leader of France’s National Front, incorrectly used the funds to pay an aide, Catherine Griset.

Griset was based at the party’s headquarters in Paris and not at the assembly, which meets in both Brussels and Strasbourg in eastern France.

The parliamentary source in Brussels, who asked not to be named, said the aim was not to punish Le Pen but to recover the funds involved.

Le Pen and her representatives had had “many occasions” to explain her position, the source said.

MEP salaries are paid on the 15th of each month, so the procedure could begin shortly, the source said, adding that it could amount to €8,000 per month when other parliamentary payments are included.

The source said parliament believes this is the normal procedure in such cases.

Griset was employed by the National Front as an “accredited assistant” between 2010 and 2016.

The European Parliament is also looking into more than €41,500 paid to Thierry Legier, who is Le Pen’s bodyguard.

Le Pen told AFP she had never received the money and compared the case with allegations that her conservative challenger in the presidential election, Francois Fillon, paid his wife and children around €900,000 for “fake jobs” as parliamentary assistants.

“To repay the money, I would have had to receive it in the first place, but I am not Francois Fillon,” she said.

“Furthermore, I formally contest this unilateral and illegal decision,” Le Pen added.

Fillon

Meanwhile, Le Pen’s challenger Fillon has been defiant in the face of claims he paid his family the huge sums for doing “fake jobs”, accusing the incumbent Socialist government of mounting what he called an “institutional coup d’etat”.

“We know where this affair comes from, it comes from the government, it comes from the left,” the conservative Fillon told his supporters in a closed-door meeting, according to those present.

AP Photo / Christophe Ena, File AP Photo / Christophe Ena, File / Christophe Ena, File

The scandal, which first erupted last week, is pulling down Fillon’s campaign, with a new poll showing that the former PM, who for weeks was the frontrunner in the race, would now be eliminated in the first round of the election in April.

An aide to Socialist President Francois Hollande responded to Fillon’s assertion by saying an ongoing investigation should be allowed to take its course, adding:

The only power is that of the justice system.

The Canard Enchaine newspaper reported today that Fillon had arranged for his wife Penelope to be paid around €830,000 as a parliamentary aide for more than a decade.

That was nearly twice as much as she was said to have earned in the original claims last week.

The paper has said it can find no one who recalls Welsh-born Penelope carrying out the work at the National Assembly building.

In another new claim, Fillon is said to have employed two of the couple’s five children to work in parliament, earning €84,000.

The new poll on Wednesday by the Elabe group showed Fillon would finish third behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, the fast-rising centrist former banker, on 23 April.

Le Pen would score between 26 and 27%, Macron as high as 23% and Fillon around 20%, a fall of between five and six points since January.

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