The president of France's far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, is mentioned in several text messages hacked from the mobile phone of a senior Kremlin official, Mediapart can reveal. These texts between two Russians date from March 2014 and refer to contacts between themselves and the FN over the official backing by the far-right French party of Russia's annexation of Crimea. The messages also include a reference to financial discussions.
On March 17th, 2014, Marine Le Pen officially gave her support to the results of the deeply controversial Crimean referendum backing annexation, while her official advisor on international affairs visited the region as an “observer”. In the hacked texts the Russians show their delight at these developments and discuss how to “thank the French” in “one manner or another”. Over the following months Marine Le Pen's FN and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen's micro party received loans from Russian banks totalling 11 million euros for party funding. The coincidence of the timing raises the question of whether the Russian loans were a form of quid pro quo for the FN's position on Crimea - an idea rejected by Marine Le Pen who says she knows neither of the two Russians concerned.
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