Russian loan: National Rally repaid 6 million euros of debt to Aviazapchastya

This is one less burden for the National Union. On Tuesday, the party announced that it had fully repaid the loan to the Russian company Aviazapchast, which the party received from a Czech-Russian bank, which then fell into the hands of an entirely Russian bank. The RN has thus reimbursed the remaining more than six million euros, according to a press release issued by Moselle MP and party treasurer Kevin Pfeffer.

“Despite the final deadline set for December 20, 2028, it was with a wait of 60 months that the National Association fulfilled the repayment of the main loan in the amount of 6,088,784 euros,” states the treasurer of the National Association in its press release.

“This early repayment was made possible by austerity policies, service restructuring, contract reviews undertaken by the RN over several years, the results of the June 2022 legislative elections and the concomitant increase in subsidies at the annual meeting. states at the national assembly.” Thanks to the arrival of almost 90 deputies at the Palais Bourbon in June 2022, the National Rally thus “won” more than 10 million euros in public funding based on its results.

Refusal from European banks

In its press release, the National Association clarifies “that this loan was taken (in 2014) to finance his political activities and ensure his participation in elections” in the face of “the refusal of all European banks, especially French ones, to provide him with a loan at that time.” After the bankruptcy of the Czech-Russian bank First Czech-Russian Bank, with which RN initially entered into an agreement, the debt was transferred to the Russian car rental company Conti, and then in 2019 resold to the Aviazapchast company, managed by former Russian soldiers and specialized on spare parts for aircraft.

As we wrote last June, Kevin Pfeffer has made it his mission to get rid of this Russian loan. “We were supposed to complete the repayment of the loan in 2028, but I am doing everything to complete it this year because this is a political argument used against us by our opponents,” justified the elected official from Moselle.

During the last presidential campaign, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen was attacked several times over this loan. During the debate between the two rounds of the 2022 presidential election, two months after the invasion of Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron estimated that Marine Le Pen was talking “to (her) banker when she talked about Russia.”