PARIS — A French billionaire seeking to use his fortune to promote a hyper-liberal, anti-immigrant agenda was interrogated by police last year as part of an ongoing probe into campaign finance violations by France’s biggest far-right party.

The Marseille prosecutors’ office said in a statement that they questioned Pierre-Edouard Stérin, an introverted and media-shy tycoon who made his first millions with the gift card company Smartbox, in June 2024. The interrogation was part of an investigation into €1.8 million worth of loans granted to several National Rally candidates to help pay for campaigns in local elections in 2020 and regional ones in 2021, including contests in major cities such as Lyon and Nice, that the far right ultimately lost.

French authorities are looking at whether there is enough evidence in the case, which has been open since January 2021, to bring forward charges related to money laundering and the illegal exercise of banking activities.

The investigation was first reported by Le Monde.

The National Rally did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Stérin confirmed to POLITICO in a statement that the billionaire had been questioned by police but denied any wrongdoing.

“Pierre-Edouard Stérin never participated, directly or indirectly, in illegal campaign financing,” the statement read. “The loans in question, made in a personal capacity, were structured by an expert on political financing and declared.”

Individuals may financially support political campaigns, but the practice is strictly regulated in France. A person may loan money to a campaign, but cannot do so “on a regular basis,” according to the French authority responsible for overseeing campaign finance laws.

After operating in relative anonymity for years from Belgium, where he lives as a self-confessed tax exile, Stérin recently came out of the woodwork as part of a push to fundamentally reshape French politics to align with this economic libertarianism and social conservatism.

The National Rally is in desperate need of those millions, as its leaders have long argued that the party is forced to seek alternative financing because French banks routinely refuse them credit.

Such efforts have often landed Le Pen and her allies in the sights of investigators.

Earlier this week, the party’s headquarters in Paris were raided in a separate investigation into other potentially illegal loans issued during the 2022 presidential election, the subsequent legislative elections and the 2024 European election.

The National Rally and its president, Jordan Bardella, denounced the raid as a political attack on an opposition party. But the list of legal and financial cases surrounding the far-right powerhouse continues to grow.

In addition to the Stérin investigation and this week’s raid, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched a probe into the alleged misuse of funds by the now-defunct Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament, of which the National Rally was a member.

And earlier this year, Le Pen was found guilty of misusing European Parliament funds and handed an immediate five-year ban on running for public office, effectively barring her from running in the next presidential election unless an appeals court overturns the decision next summer. Le Pen has repeatedly maintained her innocence.