France's Le Pen urged to address Swiss bank account allegation

PARIS (Reuters) - French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, already at odds with his party, came under pressure on Wednesday from a top member of the ruling Socialists over a media allegation that he had a hidden Swiss bank account.

Investigative website Mediapart said on Monday that he had a Swiss bank account containing 2.2 million euros (1.61 million pounds), most of it in gold ingots and coins, via a trust overseen by his butler.

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Le Pen refused to explain himself and denounced what he said was an attempt to destabilise the far-right party now headed by his daughter Marine.

But the leader of President Francois Hollande's Socialists in parliament said that was not enough and demanded the 86-year-old justify himself.

"I think there's a lot of indulgence towards the National Front on this matter - had this been raised against any other party or elected official, it would be splashed across the front pages," Bruno Le Roux told Europe 1 radio.

"I ask that, like anywhere else, an account of what happened be disclosed," said Le Roux, whose party was rocked in 2013 by revelations, also in Mediapart, that the then budget minister Jerome Cahuzac held an undeclared bank account in Switzerland. Cahuzac resigned from his post and was excluded from the party.

Le Pen did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

He is set to face a disciplinary hearing of his party's executive next week after he reiterated comments describing Nazi gas chambers as a mere "detail" of history, prompting a damaging public row with his daughter.

(Reporting by Chine Labbe, writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Mark John/Ruth Pitchford)