Mediapart

The official watchdog for the maintenance of the fundamental human rights of people in detention in France presented its latest yearly report on Wednesday. The 326-page document is a compilation of its investigations and findings for the year 2011, in which it notably denounced increasing prison overcrowding, the practice of humiliating body searches and an emphasis on security rather than reinsertion. Michel Deléan reports.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is poised to nominate a close political ally to head France’s national statistics and economic studies institute INSEE, Mediapart has learnt. The move threatens to undermine the independence of an organisation that is the reference point for impartial measurements of the French economy, and is all the more controversial for being orchestrated amid Sarkozy’s campaign for re-election in the two-round presidential poll that begins in April. Laurent Mauduit reports.

A key suspect in a major investigation into the French illegal political funding scandal known as the ‘Karachi Affair’ is also wanted for suspected money laundering by police in Spain, where he had close links with former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar and King Juan Carlos, Mediapart can reveal. Companies belonging to Abdul Rahman El Assir (pictured), a Lebanese-born businessman and arms intermediary, received millions of euros in commissions from French weapons sales that are at the heart of corruption scam allegations implicating President Sarkozy and his close entourage. Despite an international arrest warrant issued against him, El Assir is still on the run. Mediapart, meanwhile, tracked him down in Geneva. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report on the phantom witness that some are hoping will remain just so.

This year, Algeria, the largest of the Maghrebi countries of North Africa, will mark 50 years of independence from its former ruler France. But the celebrations are set to be heavily subdued by the population’s widespread frustration over social inequalities, unemployment, and the decrepitude of public institutions and infrastructures, the very same issues that prompted the Arab Spring uprisings among its neighbours to the east. Pierre Puchot examines the indicators that suggest the Algerian regime may be the next to fall to a popular revolt.

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President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign treasurer, former budget and labour minister Eric Woerth, has been placed under formal investigation for “handling" illlegal cash funding and for “influence peddling” by magistrates in charge of a major criminal enquiry into the affairs of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt. Woerth (pictured), a close ally of the French president, is suspected of receiving at least 150,000 euros in a cash payment from Bettencourt to help fund Sarkozy’s successful bid for the presidency in 2007.

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A speech by French interior minister Claude Guéant last weekend in which he claimed, in an obvious comparison between the Western and Arab worlds, that some civilizations “seem to us superior” has produced a major political storm and a controversy now centred on a fiery response this week to his remarks from opposition MP Serge Letchimy (pictured). 

France has reached an unprecedented housing crisis, with an estimated 3.6 million people living in inadequate or substandard housing while the country lacks some 900,000 accommodations in the publicly-managed ‘social housing’rented sector. That was the dire message of the latest yearly report released earlier this month by the Fondation Abbé Pierre, one of France’s leading charitable organisations dedicated to improving housing conditions for the poor, which called on presidential election candidates to sign up to a "social contract" to meet the urgent demand for affordable and decent accomodation. Ellen Salvi reports.

France is poised to adopt a massive new biometric registry, managed by the interior ministry, centralising the personal details of up to 60 million French people. The data bank will be created with the introduction of a new, high-tech identity card, which the government says is designed to combat fast-increasing identity fraud. While opponents dismiss the move as the disguised creation of an investigation tool for police, with inherent dangers of abusive use, the French electronics industry is lobbying for the new cards as an opportunity to become a world leader in the field of identity management. Louise Fessard reports.

French magistrates in charge of investigating evidence of criminal behaviour among the entourage of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt will next week place former minister Eric Woerth under investigation, one step short of charges, for “illegal financing of a political party”, according to sources close to the case. The move would be a major embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy as it centres on suspicions that Woerth collected from Bettencourt illegal and significant cash sums for Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, for which he served as treasurer. Fabrice Arfi and Michel Deléan report.

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In a bizarre twist to ongoing French judicial investigations into the suspected high-level political corruption and funding scam known as the ‘Karachi affair’, a British thriller writer has now entered the complex plot following a police raid on the offices of France’s state-owned naval defence group, the DCNS. Mediapart has learnt how the company hired Percy Kemp (pictured), dubbed by the media in France as “a true heir to John Le Carré or Graham Greene”, to write a secret report on the murders of 11 French engineers in Karachi in 2002, and which contradicted official claims by Paris and Islamabad that al-Qaeda was responsible. Fabrice Arfi reports.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday announced a battery of economic measures the scope of which has never before been undertaken by a president facing an imminent re-election contest. While still not officially declaring himself candidate in the two-round elections that begin in April, although providing a clear hint that he will run as expected, Sarkozy presented a raft of major reforms to be rushed through parliament in the weeks ahead, including a hike in VAT, a go-it-alone ‘Tobin tax’ and the effective end of the 35-hour minimum working week, all of which are to be introduced after the elections. Mathieu Magnaudeix analyses the principal measures unveiled during an hour-long interview broadcast live across eight television channels.

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When James Ellroy published his celebrated crime novel The Black Dahlia in 1987, based on the true story of the unsolved 1947 murder in Los Angeles of Elizabeth Ann Short, it established him as one of the leading neo-noire authors, selling millions of copies worldwide. Now Ellroy has agreed to a major project by French publishers to turn it into a graphic novel, with artwork by Paris-based US illustrator Miles Hyman and text by French ‘BD’ writer Matz. Mediapart has gained exclusive access to follow the complew making of this unusual work, from its initial conception all the way through to its publication in 2013. In this first report, with video, Hyman takes Dominique Bry through the early steps and sketches (pictured) of the project, for which the first, essential challenge was to convince Ellroy that it should happen.  

Four days after delivering a rousing performance of lofty rhetoric in a keynote speech to supporters at Le Bourget last Sunday, Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande has finally presented his policy programme. At a sobre press conference on Thursday, the current frontrunner appeared more concerned about demonstrating his economic competence than with “battling the world of finance”, the promise he made to the cheering party faithful last weekend. Lénaïg Bredoux and Stéphane Alliès report.

The publication this month of a book by three investigative journalists which accuses, through detailed testimony, the head of France’s domestic intelligence services of mounting illegal surveillance operations against the media has led to outcry among journalists and the country’s political opposition. Three Socialist Party MPs this week tabled questions in parliament demanding a government response to several revelations contained in the book, L’Espion du Président (The President’s Spy). Ellen Salvi reports.

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With less than 90 days to go before the French presidential elections, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande remains the frontrunner in what most observers predict will be a two-horse race with outgoing President, yet still undeclared candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande’s companion, French journalist Valérie Trierweiler (pictured with Hollande), little-known to the public, has until now played a low-profile in the elections, while continuing her professional activities. Yet she has her own personal office at Hollande’s campaign HQ. Mathilde Mathieu and Michaël Hajdenberg have been trying, not without difficulty, to find out more about the true role of she who would be France’s next First Lady.

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A book published this month in France, L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’), accuses Bernard Squarcini, head of the DCRI, the country’s domestic intelligence services, of mounting illegal surveillance operations against the media, and notably this website. In an exclusive interview with Mediapart, Yves Bertrand (pictured), the former head of the now-disbanded French police intelligence organisation, the Renseignements Généraux, reveals how for years the French presidential and prime-ministerial offices have carried out illegal surveillance operations against the media and political opponents, but now taken to even more sinister levels. “President Sarkozy is wary of everyone,” he says. “And as for journalists, don’t even mention them. That’s the most prized of prey. Those who carry out investigations are permanently covered.” Report and interview by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske.

Former French budget minister Eric Woerth faces being placed under formal investigation - one step short of being charged - over a sale he ordered when in office of state-owned forest land to a horse-racing company, after a preliminary enquiry into the deal has been told it was concluded at just one third of the real value, Mediapart can reveal.

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In November 2010, Mediapart exposed how it was the target of a police espionage operation mounted on the orders of the French presidency. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s then-chief-of-staff, Claude Guéant, the current interior minister, responded by suing Mediapart for libel. But Guéant suddenly dropped his lawsuit in June last year, fearful of the disclosures that would emerge during the trial, which had been due in the autumn. A book published this week in France, L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’), focussing on the actions of French domestic intelligence chief Bernard Squarcini (pictured), contains new revelations about the scope of the surveillance of Mediapart and other French media. Here, in an outline of pertinent extracts, Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel explains why Mediapart has decided to take legal action to prompt an independent judicial investigation into the latest shocking disclosures.

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When French publicly-owned nuclear giant Areva bought Canadian mining company UraMin in 2007, it boasted of having secured major uranium deposits in Africa. But five years on, no uranium has ever been mined there, and Areva has had to write off nearly 2 billion euros in its accounts. Here, Martine Orange investigates the roots of the fiasco and attempts to cover up what promises to become a major industrial scandal, along with the intrigue surrounding the company's sacked and furious CEO Anne Lauvergeon (pictured).

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With 100 days to go before the first round of the French presidential elections, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande (pictured) is still baffling observers and rivals alike. In the wings for over a year now, Hollande has pulled off a tour de force by imposing his slow tempo on the political debate, displaying a singular virtuosity in the art of fuzziness. Stéphane Alliès takes a closer look at the strategy of the man who hopes to become France's first socialist president since 1995.

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Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s announced Friday that it had downgraded France’s triple-A credit rating to AA+. Mediapart editor François Bonnet argues here that the downgrade has stripped bare President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attempts, as he prepares to announce his candidature for re-election in April, to hide the amplitude of the economic crisis and his own failures in Europe and at home.

French interior minister Claude Guéant has finally issued official instructions loosening his crackdown on the number of residency and work permits granted to non-European Union foreign students in France. The backtrack followed vigorous opposition to the measures, announced last May, from the country’s academic and business organizations. Carine Fouteau reports.

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France’s blue collar workers, junior white-collar staff, the unemployed and the retired make up a lower class that is also the majority among the country’s electorate. Hit hardest by the current economic crisis, and largely ignored by the traditional Left, there are consistent indicators that a significant proportion is being won over by the Far Right Front National party presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen. In this interview with Mediapart, social geographer Christophe Guilluy offers an insight into an economic and social groundshift in France that has produced an abandoned and despairing category of the population, what he calls “a new lower class which the Left does not really understand”.

As France approaches presidential elections, held over two rounds in April and May, both the mainstream Left and Right are threatened with a significant desertion of their core electorate among the country’s low- and middle-income earners, struggling to survive the devastating effects of the economic crisis and revolted by a series of major scandals among the political elites. Rachida el Azzouzi and Mathieu Magnaudeix report from Crepoil and La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, two dormitory communities just east of Paris, where hope in the future has turned to rage against broken promises.

A French journalist who wrote an article (pictured) published in Le Monde revealing confidential French secret service documents on Osama Bin Laden allegedly first attempted to sell the files for 150,000 euros to US law firm Motley Rice, which represented families of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks. Guillaume Dasquié, now editor of French website Owni, held a Swiss bank account used for payments from the sale of secret documents. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

Jean-François Copé, leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, is at the centre of a police investigation into the annulment, when he was budget minister, of a tax back payment of 6.2 million-euros demanded from a wealthy businessman connected to two key suspects in the so-called ‘Karachigate' illegal political funding affair. The tax adjustment, which was reduced by 4 million euros (document above), came after arms dealer Ziad Takieddine raised the case with Copé on the behest of Nicolas Bazire, managing director of luxury goods firm LVMH, according to a statement given to police by Takieddine's British former wife, Nicola Johnson. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

A group of 70 French charitable organizations, all involved in helping people in situations of social exclusion, from the homeless to the handicapped, launched a public appeal Thursday warning against the dramatic effects of economy-driven social policies and budget cuts which they say are only creating greater financial problems for the future. Carine Fouteau reports.

The French nuclear industry has been ordered to implement urgent safety improvements costing several billion euros after a nationwide stress test of the country's major nuclear sites found they were vulnerable to major natural disasters such as that which struck the Japanese plant at Fukushima last March. "We are not asking for these investments, we are imposing them," said André-Paul Lacoste, head of the French Nuclear Safety Authority, adding that the significant cost of his watchdog's demands could force plant closures. Jade Lindgaard reports.