Fabrice Arfi

Co-responsable des enquêtes à Mediapart avec Michaël Hajdenberg.

#Presse Ancien reporter à Lyon Figaro (1999-2004), à 20 Minutes (2004-2005), co-fondateur de l'hebdomadaire Tribune de Lyon (2005-2007), j'ai également collaboré à l'AFP, au Monde, à Libération, au Parisien/Aujourd'hui en France, au Canard enchaîné...

#Livres Je suis l'auteur (ou co-auteur) de plusieurs ouvrages : La Troisième Vie (Seuil), Pas tirés d'affaires (Seuil), D'argent et de sang (Seuil), Avec les compliments du Guide (avec Karl Laske, chez Fayard), Le Sens des Affaires (Calmann-Lévy), Le Contrat (avec Fabrice Lhomme, chez Stock), L'Affaire Bettencourt, un scandale d'Etat (avec Fabrice Lhomme et la rédaction de Mediapart, chez Don Quichotte), L'Affaire Cahuzac, en bloc et en détail (avec la rédaction de Mediapart, chez Don Quichotte), La République sur écoute (avec la rédaction de Mediapart, chez Don Quichotte). J'ai également co-dirigé avec Paul Moreira l'ouvrage collectif Informer n'est pas un délit (Calmann-Lévy).

#Bande dessinée Je suis le co-auteur avec Benoît Collombat, Michel Despratx, Elodie Guéguen et Geoffrey Le Guilcher de la BD Sarkozy-Kadhafi, des billets et des bombes (La Revue dessinée/Delcourt), dessinée par Thierry Chavant.

#Film Je suis le co-auteur avec Jean-Christophe Klotz d'un documentaire sur l'affaire Karachi, L'argent, le sang et la démocratie, qui a reçu en 2014 le Grand Prix et le Prix du Public du Festival international du Grand Reportage d'Actualité (FIGRA). Co-auteur de la série D’argent et de Sang, adaptée du livre éponyme et réalisée par Xavier Giannoli. Co-auteur du documentaire de cinéma Personne n’y comprend rien, sur l’affaire Sarkozy-Kadhafi. 

Declaration of interest

In the interest of transparency towards its readers, Mediapart’s journalists fill out and make public since 2018 a declaration of interests on the model of the one filled out by members of parliament and senior civil servants with the High Authority for Transparency and Public Life (HATVP), a body created in 2014 after Mediapart’s revelations on the Cahuzac affair.

Consult my declaration of interests

All his articles

  • Unprecedented trial starts of French cement firm accused of funding Islamic State

    France

    The multinational cement manufacturer Lafarge went on trial in Paris on November 4th, accused of knowingly financing terrorist groups in Syria between 2012 and 2014, in a case set to last until mid-December. Several former executives, including ex-CEO Bruno Lafont, are also in the dock in what is effectively a legal process where corporate greed is on trial.

    by Fabrice Arfi

  • Sarkozy behind bars: how a powerful elite seeks to portray the ex-president as a victim

    France — Opinion

    At just before 9.40am on October 21st Nicolas Sarkozy entered the gates of La Santé prison in Paris to begin the five-year jail term he was given after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy in the Libyan election funding scandal, a first for a former French president. But current president Emmanuel Macron received Sarkozy at the Élysée while justice minister Gérald Darmanin has said he will visit him in prison. And French business groups Accor and Lagardère groups have rallied to his support, while television channels have largely glossed over the seriousness of the offences. As Fabrice Arfi argues in this op-ed article, the jailing of Nicolas Sarkozy lays bare, as never before, the panic of a small but powerful elite that desires nothing less than the return of pre-French Revolution privilege.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Sarkozy-Gaddafi court case: ten questions to help understand an historic verdict

    France — Analysis

    Mediapart has analysed the 400 pages of the court judgement that saw ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, his former senior aides Claude Guéant, Brice Hortefeux, middleman Alexandre Djouhri and others convicted in the Libyan funding case on September 25th. Once set out, the facts and the law show a clarity that has got lost amid the chaotic political and media reaction, which has been both false and overblown.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Nicolas Sarkozy jailed for criminal conspiracy over Libyan election funding scandal

    France

    In an historic verdict, the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been given a five-year jail term after being found guilty of criminal conspiracy over a plan to accept money from Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime to fund his 2007 election campaign. Sarkozy, 70, was also fined 100,000 euros and banned from public office for five years. The court made clear that the former head of state will have to serve time behind bars even if he appeals. He was meanwhile acquitted of charges of corruption, the receipt of the proceeds of the misappropriation of public funds, and illegal campaign financing. Sarkozy's conviction follows ten years of judge-led investigations into the affair, and investigations by Mediapart which go back to 2011.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Ziad Takieddine, the final judgement: key figure in Sarkozy-Libya case dies two days before court verdict

    France

    A key figure in the Karachi and Sarkozy-Gaddafi scandals, the middleman Ziad Takieddine died on Tuesday, September 23rd, at a hospital in Beirut. His death in the Lebanese capital came just two days before a court in Paris delivers its long-awaited verdict in the trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and other defendants – including Takieddine himself - over the Libyan-French presidential election funding affair. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • French PM François Bayrou restores his mayor's office - while preaching austerity to the nation

    Politique — Investigation

    Prime minister François Bayrou has approved the renovation of his office in Pau, the small city in south-west France where he is also still the serving mayor. The aim of the work is to “restore the original splendour” of that office, and the bill - to be paid from public funds - comes in at 40,000 euros, according to Mediapart's information. Such a move is politically explosive in the middle of a national austerity plan being pushed by the prime minister himself and against the backdrop of a city council whose public debt has soared since it came under Bayrou's control. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • The racist and homophobic writings of a far-right MP and key ally of Marine Le Pen

    Politique — Investigation

    Caroline Parmentier is a Member of Parliament for the far-right Rassemblement National and a key strategist for that party's former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. In particular, she has been one of the architects of Le Pen’s so-called “de-demonisation” strategy to soften the party's image and erase memories of its murky past. Yet an investigation by Mediapart has shown that over a period of 30 years Caroline Parmentier wrote racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments for a far-right publication. She also openly expressed her support for Marshal Philippe Pétain – who headed France's wartime Vichy government which collaborated with the Nazis - on Facebook as recently as 2018. Rassemblement National now faces growing embarrassment over these revelations about a woman who is a close friend of Marine Le Pen. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • When Macron and Le Pen align against the rule of law

    France — Opinion

    Emmanuel Macron and his principal opponent, far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, recently found common ground when commenting on two judicial affairs. In the case of Le Pen, it was about her conviction for embezzlement and a sentence that bans her for five years from holding public office. In the case of Macron, it was his refusal to back calls to strip former president Nicolas Sarkozy of his Légion d’honneur award after his conviction for corruption. Both cited the electoral choice by “the sovereign people” as superior to the laws in place. In this op-ed article, Fabrice Arfi, co-head of Mediapart’s investigations unit, argues that this anti-judicial populism, a sort of French Trumpism, is the result of a political and moral collapse that is not limited to one political camp alone.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • French PM Bayrou and the Catholic school abuse affair: collective denial and individual error

    France — Opinion

    Prime minister François Bayrou may not have known everything about the abuses being committed at the private Catholic school at Bétharram in south-west France, but he knew enough while occupying various political posts over the years to at least have tried to take action. Yet he did nothing. On May 14th he is due to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the unfolding scandal at the independent school. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi wonders whether the head of the French government will continue to double down on his disastrous strategy of lying over the issue.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Number of corruption cases in France has doubled over past eight years says official report

    France

    The latest data from the Ministry of the Interior and France's anti-corruption agency show there has been a sharp rise in the number of offences involving dishonesty or breaches of probity, across all categories of such crime. This leap has been driven in particular by the number of cases of corruption, which has almost doubled over that period. Yet despite these startling figures and recent high-profile corruption cases involving prominent figures, France's political leaders continue to ignore the issue, as Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • Gaddafi-Sarkozy funding trial ends with defence speech claiming 'empty' prosecution case

    Justice

    The trial of Nicolas Sarkozy and 11 others on corruption charges relating to the alleged funding of the former French president’s 2007 election campaign by the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi ended this week with the speeches of Sarkozy’s defence team. The four lawyers spoke for five hours calling for the charges against him to be thrown out and denouncing an “empty” case brought by prosecutors, who have requested Sarkozy be handed a seven-year prison sentence. Given the final word on Tuesday before the judges announce their verdicts in September, Sarkozy dismissed what he said was a “political and violent” prosecution case. Fabrice Arfi was in court on the day the curtain went down on an extraordinary trial.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Sarkozy and Le Pen apologists are wrong: there is no 'judges' Republic' - just the Republic's judges

    France — Opinion

    The court verdict that has effectively barred far-right leader Marine Le Pen from standing at the 2027 presidential election, preceded by prosecutors’ demands for former president Nicolas Sarkozy to receive a seven-year prison sentence in the Sarkozy-Gaddafi Libyan funding trial, have one thing in common. Within the space of a few days both pronouncements provoked unbridled populist rhetoric railing against the rule of law. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi argues that beneath this outcry there lies a deep longing for the return of privileges and for the end of equality before the law.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

All his blog posts

Mediapart’s journalists also use their blogs, and participate in their own name to this space of debates, by confiding behind the scenes of investigations or reports, doubts or personal reactions to the news.

Fabrice Arfi (avatar)

Fabrice Arfi

Mediapart Journalist

32 Posts

0 Editions

  • Affaire Sarkozy-Kadhafi : la manipulation du « Point »

    Blog post

    Mediapart a recensé 20 erreurs et omissions dans un article de l’hebdomadaire, qui met en cause, ce 2 octobre, notre enquête dans l’affaire des financements libyens. Revue de détails.

  • Coronavirus: face à la crise sanitaire, la nécessité de la transparence

    Blog post

    Parce qu'il ne peut y avoir de confinement pour l’information d’intérêt général, Mediapart a décidé de créer une adresse mail spécifique — covid@mediapart.fr — afin de recueillir toutes les informations qualifiées, y compris documentaires (notes, rapports, échanges, circulaires, etc…), capables d’éclairer le débat public.

  • Les Rugy n’ont toujours pas digéré

    Blog post

    Séverine Servat de Rugy, l’épouse de l’ancien numéro 2 du gouvernement qui avait dû démissionner suite aux révélations de Mediapart sur l’appétit du couple pour le mélange des genres avec l’argent public, publie un livre-témoignage, « La Marche du crabe ». Mediapart l’a lu.

  • La manipulation

    Blog post

    J’ai fait l’objet d’une manipulation de la DGSI. Discrète, habile, subtile. Je ne parle pas d’une surveillance téléphonique illégale, d’un cambriolage nocturne ou d’une filature avec le col de l’imperméable relevé, non, je parle d’une petite manip' de papier. Explications.

  • «D’argent et de sang»: un livre et un chat sur Mediapart le 10 septembre, de 11h à midi

    Blog post

    Après les enquêtes de Mediapart entamées à l’automne 2015 sur “la mafia du CO2”, j’ai voulu consacrer à cette histoire devenue pour moi une obsession un livre, «D’argent et de sang», publié aujourd'hui aux éditions du Seuil.