The far-right French politician was a leading candidate to become the country’s next president, but has now been barred from running for public office for five years.

PARIS − French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement on Monday and handed an immediate five-year ban from public office, a sentence that will bar her from running in the 2027 presidential race unless she successfully appeals beforehand.

It’s my political death they want,” far-right leader Marine Le Pen claimed in November – a prediction that proved prescient, though few took it seriously at the time.