French Extreme Right looks to Shanghai for financial bail out

In what has to be just about one of the strangest financial deals, France’s Extreme Right party, Front National (FN), looks set to be rescued in a manner of speaking by a Chinese university.

According to the weekly news magazine L’Express, the FN is to sell the building it has used as its headquarters since 1994 to the university of Shanghai, which has signed a so-called promesse de vente – the first step in the process of buying any property here in France.

The completion of the sale – should it go through – would be within the next three months.

Located on the outskirts of Paris, the building – nicknamed the "Paquebot" or "liner"– is for many as much of an eyesore as the FN has been on the political scene for the past couple of decades.

For once the party’s leader, 80-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen, is remaining tight-lipped and unusually discreet about exactly how much the university has offered for the building. But it’s rumored to be somewhere in the region of €12-15 million.

That kind of sum would come in handy for the cash-strapped party, which has been in debt for the past year since taking a hammering in the 2007 parliamentary elections. A number of its candidates failed to secure the five percent threshold of votes in constituencies to ensure that their election expenses would be reimbursed.

And the party has recently been ordered by the courts to repay outstanding debts of around €8 million in unpaid bills.

While not wanting to be drawn on the price offered for the Paquebot, Le Pen was more forthcoming on what use the university intended for the building, insisting that it would be "transformed into a school which would essentially organize courses for Chinese to come and perfect their French."

The FN was founded by Le Pen back in 1972. It has around 75,000 members and achieved its greatest electoral success back in 2002, when Le Pen made it through to the second round run-off against Jacques Chirac for the French presidency.

Although the FN holds no seats in either chamber of the French parliament, it has seven representatives in the European parliament.