French anti-immigration leader sells HQ to Chinese

In this file photo France's far-right leader Jean-Marie le Pen attends the National Front's annual May Day rally in Paris May 1, 2008. French anti-immigrant party the National Front is selling its historic headquarters to a Chinese university to raise much-needed cash, Le Pen was quoted as saying on Monday.

PARIS (Reuters) - French anti-immigrant party the National Front is selling its historic headquarters to a Chinese university to raise much-needed cash, the veteran far-right party's leader Jean-Marie Le Pen was quoted as saying on Monday.

The National Front has campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform for over three decades and Le Pen's slogan in several presidential elections was "Keep France for the French".

Le Pen shocked France by reaching the run-off in the 2002 presidential election. But since then his party's fortunes have turned and stinging defeats in last year's parliamentary polls have left it deep in the red.

"We have signed a sale agreement with a university based in Shanghai," Le Pen was quoted as saying on the website of the magazine L'Express, adding that he believed the university wanted to turn the building into a French language school.

The National Front has had some bank accounts frozen in disputes with creditors, and Le Pen had already auctioned off his bullet-proof car on eBay to raise money before agreeing to part with his old headquarters, nicknamed "the cruiseliner".

The party had estimated the value of the imposing building, located by the river Seine in a smart Paris suburb, at 15 to 20 million euros ($22-$30 million) but Le Pen did not say how much the Chinese university would pay for it.

(Reporting by Gerard Bon, writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Jon Boyle)