Never has the Rassemblement National (RN) been so happy to make an external money transfer. On September 5, party treasurer Kévin Pfeffer approved the payment of €6,088,784 to a Russian aerospace company, Aviazapchast, run by ex-military personnel close to the army's secret service. For reasons still unexplained to this day, this company had taken over the RN debt contracted with a Moscow bank nine years ago: the famous "Russian loan." This cash injection had saved the Front National (the RN's former name) in 2014, but caused former party president and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen great embarrassment in early 2022, when Moscow invaded Ukraine and Emmanuel Macron referred to Vladimir Putin as her "banker."
Paying back the money had been a priority for Jordan Bardella since his election as RN president in November 2022, to minimize the impact of the Russian issue on his campaign for the European elections in June 2024, for which he will head the party's list. This has now been done, much sooner than expected. In his initial plans, Pfeffer, the treasurer had hoped to spread the cost between now and the launch of the 2027 presidential campaign, "without having to resort to another loan." At Bardella's request, he brought it forward by three years.
How? "A policy of savings, restructuring its services and renegotiating its contracts," according to the RN. It was primarily the public funding obtained thanks to the 2022 legislative election results that enabled the loan to be repaid in one go. Up until 2027, this state grant will amount to €10.2 million each year, double what the RN had previously been receiving. The first installment arrived in the party's coffers in July, and 60% went directly to pay off the loan.
By the end of 2023, Pfeffer expects to symbolically bring the party's debt below €20 million, all of which is owed to individuals who subscribed to the RN's "grand emprunt national" ("grand national loan"), at a 5% interest rate. By being frugal, the RN aims to completely clean up its accounts by 2027, paying back €5 million euros annually.
"Ball and chain," "jingle bells on their head," "cumbersome corpse," "political problem": In recent months, RN executives have been showcasing their lexical inventiveness to describe this Russian loan. "It's being used as an argument by my opponents, unfairly in my opinion, and I don't intend to give my opponents any arguments," said Bardella more prosaically, in an interview on Wednesday, September 20, during a trip to the Pas-de-Calais region (northern France), focused on the senatorial elections.
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