French police and investigators raided the offices and home of far-right Front National party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen on Wednesday, searching for evidence of alleged tax evasion through foreign bank accounts, reports The Guardian.
Le Pen, 87, contacted while on a trip abroad, flatly denied any wrongdoing. French news website Mediapart said in April he had a hidden account in Switzerland managed by an associate.
“I am stunned and infuriated, I do not see what justified such a search,” he said by telephone. “I have no secret bank account abroad.”
Two other searches were conducted as part of the same inquiry at the homes of a current and a former assistant to Le Pen, a source in the French judiciary said.
Le Pen was expelled earlier this year from the party that he founded after a feud with his daughter Marine, who is now leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party and set to run for president of France in 2017.
That followed remarks in which he repeated declarations that the Nazi gas chambers were a “detail” of second world war history. Marine Le Pen has broadened support for the party by shedding the Front’s antisemitic image and focusing more on issues such as unemployment.
The search of Le Pen’s home was one of several operations that sparked political ire this week against independent judicial investigators in France.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday said the country would do better spending money on monitoring potential terrorists than on tracking political leaders such as himself.
Read more of this Reuters report published by The Guardian.
See also:
Golden assets: Jean-Marie Le Pen's secret Swiss bank account