Defending Wallerand de Saint-Just, the former treasurer of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, who has become a key figure in the prosecution’s case at her appeal trial for embezzlement over suspected fake jobs at the European Parliament, was no easy task. On Tuesday, February 10, Henri Laquay took on the challenge with conciseness, subtlety and humor, even though his client’s legal prospects did not lend themselves to levity.
De Saint-Just, 75, a former lawyer, had served as the party’s treasurer from 2009 to 2021, and was convicted on March 31, 2025, for “complicity in the embezzlement of public funds” (amounting to €3.1 million) and sentenced to three years in prison, two of which were suspended, a €50,000 fine, and a three-year ban from holding public office. According to the lower court’s decision, he had played “a decisive role” in enabling the party to “save money thanks to the European Parliament.”
The decision said that a “system” to pay party activists “under the guise of fictitious parliamentary assistant contracts” had been set up by party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, and then expanded by his daughter. The court found that the existence of such a system was “beyond doubt.” “To say there was no system would be a bit crude,” Laquay, a Brussels-based lawyer, said, “So I’ll be a bit crude.” While he readily admitted that some MEPs’ assistants, “in a proportion difficult to define,” had, indeed, worked for the party and not only for their MEP, he argued that this did not constitute a system, especially since the European Parliament’s rules “changed over time and were not very clear.”
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