PARIS — French police raided the headquarters of far-right party National Rally on Wednesday and seized documents and accounting records, the party's leader said, as part of a sweeping campaign finance inquiry.
Prosecutors said they are investigating allegations of illegal financing of longtime party leader Marine Le Pen's 2022 presidential bid, and the party's European Parliament and French parliamentary campaigns. The National Rally, which seeks to sharply curtail migration and restrict Muslims' rights, is the biggest single party in France's lower house of parliament.
Jordan Bardella, 29, who took over the presidency of the popular party in 2022, said that police seized ''all files relating to the party's recent regional, presidential, legislative, and European campaigns — in other words, all of its electoral activity."
Bardella slammed the raid in a message on X. ''This spectacular and unprecedented operation is clearly part of a new harassment operation. It is a serious attack on pluralism and democratic change,'' he said.
The raid came after Le Pen — runner-up to incumbent President Emmanuel Macron in 2022 — was convicted of embezzlement in April. She and 24 other party officials were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, violating the 27-nation bloc's regulations.
But Wednesday's raid stems from a different, more recent case.
The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement to the AP that searches were carried out at the National Rally's headquarters, at the headquarters of unidentified companies and at the homes of people leading those companies.
The searches were prompted by a judicial inquiry opened a year ago into a raft of allegations, including fraud, money laundering and forgery, the prosecutor's office said.
