Marine Le Pen on Wednesday warned that the death of a Jewish man hit by a tram while fleeing a mob outside Paris was a sign of the “increasing savagery” of French society that she would reverse if elected president.
A viral video showing Jeremy Cohen, 31, being attacked then run over by a tram north-east of Paris in February has dragged law and order to the heart of France’s presidential election campaign ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Until now, living costs and the war in Ukraine have dominated the French political debate.
The campaign was also dominated on Wednesday by the news that French prosecutors have opened a probe into suspected tax fraud by management consultancy firms whose contracts with the Macron government surpassed €1 billion last year, a record.
Rivals have seized on the spending and tax fraud allegations – which centre on US-based giant McKinsey – to accuse Mr Macron, a business-friendly ex-investment banker, of shamelessly outsourcing work that could have been done by France’s burgeoning civil service.
Mr Macron has denounced “untruths” surrounding what has been dubbed “McKinseygate”. He has denied that there is anything “murky” about the relationship, saying: “If there is proof of manipulation, it should go to the criminal courts.”
Mr Cohen’s death took place in February but the incident went viral after being relayed by far-Right candidate Eric Zemmour, who tweeted: “Is he dead because he was Jewish? Why has this scandal been covered up?”
The family of the victim – who had a “light” mental and physical handicap – said it had asked the 63-year old ex-TV polemist to “help them so that the case didn’t get closed or hushed up”.
Ms Le Pen, his nationalist rival who is polling to reach the presidential runoff against Mr Macron on Sunday, weighed in by calling for a parliamentary commission of inquiry over what “appears to have been a lie regarding the circumstances of his death”.
“Jeremy has just been added to the long list of the ‘ensavagement’ of society that we have been denouncing for years,” she told Le Figaro, adding that her firm hand would reverse the trend if elected.
