Laurent Mauduit

All his articles

• French state doles out millions to newspapers owned by billionaire press barons

  Économie et social — Opinion

  

  As a result of the digital revolution, print versions of France's national daily newspapers sell barely more than 150,000 copies a day at kiosks and other outlets. This contrasts with a figure of 1.3 million daily copies back in 1990. Yet the French state  always seems ready to come to the aid of the various billionaires who own France's national titles.  Just a few weeks ago  the government set aside 30 million euros in extra help for the printed press. It is an approach which is both unjust and incoherent, argues Mediapart co-founder Laurent Mauduit in this op-ed article.

  6 January 2023

  by Laurent Mauduit

• French crypto investors file complaint against Binance over 2.4m-euro losses

  Finance — Investigation

  

  A group of 15 French cryptocurrency investors have filed a legal complaint against Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which they accuse of marketing its services in France before it received official approval to do so, of using misleading commercial practices and receiving the proceeds of fraud. The complaint by the group, who claim losses of close to 2.4 million euros in transactions via the platform, is the first of its kind in France involving the highly speculative and volatile sector of digital assets. Laurent Mauduit reports.

  25 December 2022

  by Laurent Mauduit

• Haiti: the dark history of French colonial banks resurfaces

  Finance — Investigation

  

  In its recent powerful investigation into the exploitation of Haiti by France in the colonial past, The New York Times highlighted the predatory role played by the bank Crédit Industriel et Commercial. In fact, reports Laurent Mauduit, all French colonial banks practiced this same pillaging system of exploitation in Asia, Africa and the Antilles.

  11 June 2022

  by Laurent Mauduit

• The appalling greed of French companies over Russia

  International — Opinion

  

  On Wednesday Match 23rd the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky called on French companies to quit their involvement with Russia, but without much success. This can largely can be put down to the greed of the business world. But as Mediapart co-founder Laurent Mauduit argues in this op-ed article, the lack of solidarity by businesses can also be explained by the French government's ambiguous stance on the issue.

  27 March 2022

  by Laurent Mauduit

• The indecent pay of France's top executives

  Économie et social — Opinion

  

  The latest annual report by investors’ advisory agency Proxinvest on the remunerations paid to the chief executives of France’s 120 most traded stock exchange companies reveals a staggering increase in payments in 2019. In this op-ed article, Mediapart economy and finance correspondent Laurent Mauduit details the figures and argues why they represent a serious injustice when millions of French households face an economic crisis that threatens to plunge them into poverty.  

  27 November 2020

  by Laurent Mauduit

• How lockdown threatens to burst French football's speculative financial bubble

  France — Investigation

  

  The Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP), which runs the top-tier professional football leagues in France, has voted to obtain a 224.5 million-euro loan from the French state to help out its member clubs, especially those in the elite Ligue 1 division. But even despite this help some clubs are on the brink of going into administration. Mediapart can reveal confidential documents which show the risky nature of the loan arrangement, which the state agreed to without making any solvency checks. As Laurent Mauduit writes, there is a risk that French taxpayers could end up having to pay the bill for the excesses of the football industry.

  23 May 2020

  by Laurent Mauduit

• As protests sweep France, another 'oversight' by fallen pension reform tsar

  France

  

  Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took part in nationwide union-led protests in France on Tuesday against the government’s proposed reform of the pension system, while strike action disrupted many sectors including transport, education institutions, postal services and power supplies. Meanwhile, the government suffered a severe blow in its showdown with the unions after the forced resignation on Monday of the man regarded as the architect of the reforms, the High Commissioner for Pensions Jean-Paul Delevoye, for having failed to register as required by law ten of his present or recent outside professional activities. Now Mediapart can reveal yet another: his membership until 2017 of the London-based Brazzaville Foundation, which is in effect a propaganda arm for the strongman president of the Republic of the Congo.

  17 December 2019

  by Laurent Mauduit, Karl Laske and Ellen Salvi

• How Libération's multi-billionaire owner bills the ailing daily for 'services'

  France — Analysis

  

  Much of the French media is owned by billionaire industrialists and businessmen with financial interests that sit uncomfortably with the notion of freedom and pluralism of the press, while some argue that without such wealthy proprietors many titles would fold. One case in point is France’s venerable leftwing daily Libération, co-founded in 1973 by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and now owned by multi-billionaire Patrick Drahi who made his fortune in telecommunications. Laurent Mauduit has been studying the struggling newspaper’s financial accounts, and details here how Drahi last year billed it for 1.8 million euros for “services” by his group, which notably included “restructuring”, further aggravating its vast debts offset in part by public subsidies.

  3 August 2019

  by Laurent Mauduit

• Mediapart guarantees its future independence

  France

  

  On top of its successful journalistic venture, Mediapart has now come up with its own capitalist invention by placing 100% of its capital in a not-for-profit structure which will ring-fence it and ensure it cannot be bought or sold in the future. The new Fund for a Free Press will also have its own objective in the general interest - to defend the freedom, independence and pluralism of the press. Its four co-founders, François Bonnet, Laurent Mauduit, Edwy Plenel and Marie-Hélène Smiejan-Wanneroy, explain this move to guarantee Mediapart's permanent independence.

  2 July 2019

  by François Bonnet, Laurent Mauduit, Edwy Plenel and Marie-Hélène Smiejan-Wanneroy

  Free access

• Revealed: how IMF chief Lagarde ducked Tapie fraud trial

  France

  

  IMF chief Christine Lagarde was called by French tycoon Bernard Tapie to testify as a witness at his current trial in Paris on charges of fraud over a staggering 2008 award to him of 404 million euros out of public funds. The payout was made while Lagarde was French finance minister, and followed her approval of a private arbitration process which has since been overturned. Washington-based Lagarde has declined to appear at the trial, where she would have been a key witness, apparently because of her busy agenda. Mediapart’s Laurent Mauduit has discovered that in fact Lagarde has every opportunity to attend the trial, but has instead decided to take part in an unrelated event just a few kilometres away from the Paris courthouse.

  22 March 2019

  by Laurent Mauduit

• Carlos Ghosn: the contrast between severity in Japan and impunity in France

  International — Opinion

  The case of the arrest and continued detention in Japan of Renault chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn over alleged financial misconduct has revealed the severity of the Japanese judicial system, which again denied him bail at a hearing in Tokyo this week. But it has also illustrated the situation of impunity granted in France to numerous high-placed individuals like Ghosn, writes Mediapart co-founder Laurent Mauduit in this opinion article. For while it now appears that the French government is finally moving towards his replacement as head of the French carmaker, economy and finance minister Bruno Le Maire has until now done his utmost to protect Ghosn, even declaring that there was ‘nothing in particular to report’ on his tax situation in France, when in fact the boss of one of France's biggest industrial corporations has been a tax resident in the Netherlands since 2012.

  16 January 2019

  by Laurent Mauduit

• Proof of Macron chief of staff’s lie over family links to shipping firm

  International — Investigation

  

  Contrary to what he has stated, President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff Alexis Kohler has not always revealed his family links to the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), and in his duties as a senior public servant has not always stood aside from issues involving the giant Italian-Swiss shipping firm. Official documents from the major French port of Le Havre, seen by Mediapart, show that Kohler took part in discussions and votes concerning the company while he sat on the port's Supervisory Board as a civil servant from 2010 to 2012. Laurent Mauduit and Martine Orange investigate.

  7 August 2018

  by Laurent Mauduit and Martine Orange