brazil, france, romania, here in 20230, germany, and where else not as obvious. lawfare. some creature from beyond the grave is behind this in some fashion, though who ain't exactly clear. this will require a french revolution sort of solution as all of those in charge seem to be in the control of that power;

Marine Le Pen, former chair of the French Right-populist Rassemblement National and the leading opposition politician in France, has been convicted by a Paris court of embezzling public funds. She has received a four-year prison sentence, two of which are suspended and two of which are to be served under house arrest with an ankle monitor. Le Pen will also have to pay a fine of €100,000, and she has been deprived of the right to run for political office for five years. Le Pen is leading the polls in the race to succeed Emanuel Macron in the coming 2027 presidential election, with the support of over one-third of the French electorate. With this sentence, the Paris criminal court hopes to remove the leading candidate from the race entirely. Le Pen can of course appeal, but her prospects are uncertain and a favourable ruling may be years away.

Le Pen was convicted alongside eight other members of the Rassemblement National/Front National and 12 parliamentary aides. She did not personally embezzle funds or enrich herself from EU coffers. Rather, prosecutors accuse her of directing aides to undertake work for her party while they were receiving salaries from the European Parliament. They claim this happened between 2004 and 2016, and that Le Pen and her associates misappropriated over €4 million in this way. While nobody doubts the substance of the accusations, what Le Pen did was far from unusual and the sentence just seems ridiculous to me. Many European parliamentary representatives have used staff paid from parliamentary budgets for party projects – including Franziska Brantner, the present Co-Chair of German Green Party. Until recently this was a common practice, and even now the distinction between party and parliamentary work is not always easy to maintain, and both routinely and deliberately blurred..........more...........