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

  • French budget minister and Swiss bank account affair: police open investigation

    France

    A month after the publication of revelations that budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac held an undisclosed Swiss bank account until 2010, a formal investigation has been opened into the affair, Mediapart can reveal. The prosecution authorities have started a preliminary inquiry into the alleged 'laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud'. The investigation is being carried out by detectives from the national financial and tax investigation unit the Division nationale d’investigations financières et fiscales. Fabrice Arfi and Michel Deléan report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Michel Deléan

    Free access

  • Swiss bank account affair - the budget minister's lies

    France — Investigation

    Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister accused of having an undisclosed Swiss bank account until 2010, has withheld the truth surrounding the affair from the highest offices of state, Mediapart can reveal. Mediapart can disclose that the person who possesses the key recording on which Cahuzac (pictured) is heard discussing his bank account has himself approached the office of French President François Hollande to confirm it is genuine. Meanwhile email correspondence between the minister and friends shows that he himself does not deny the authenticity of the recording. And Mediapart can also reveal that the tax authorities have started to carry out thorough checks of the budget minister’s recent tax declarations, which appear to show numerous discrepancies. All of which, says Fabrice Arfi, is proof that Jérôme Cahuzac is in an untenable political situation.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Revealed: the man who handles the budget minister's own personal fortune

    France — Investigation

    Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister accused of having a secret Swiss bank account until 2010, has amassed considerable wealth from his work as a hair transplant surgeon and consultant. Mediapart can reveal the name of the man who handles the minister's personal wealth, the ultra-discreet Hervé Dreyfus (see photo, right). Mediapart can also disclose it was Dreyfus to whom Cahuzac was talking during his now infamous telephone conversation when he was accidentally recorded talking about the Swiss account – whose existence he still continues to deny. Fabrice Arfi, Dan Israel, Mathilde Mathieu and Martine Orange investigate the financial background and contacts of France's under-fire budget minister.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Dan Israel, Mathilde Mathieu and Martine Orange

    Free access

  • French budget minister caught on tape discussing his secret Swiss account

    France — Investigation

    Following French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac’s vehement denials of Mediapart’s revelations that he held a secret bank account in Switzerland over a number of years until 2010, Mediapart publishes here a sound recording of a conversation in which Cahuzac (pictured) explicitly refers to the account, held with a branch of Swiss banking giant UBS in Geneva. Cahuzac, who last month announced a crackdown by his ministry on tax fraud, can be heard saying: “What bothers me is that I still have an account open with UBS", before adding, with irony: "UBS is not necessarily the most hidden of banks.” Fabrice Arfi reports.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • The French budget minister and his secret Swiss bank account

    France — Investigation

    French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac (pictured), who last month announced his ministry was launching a crackdown on tax fraud, held for several years a secret bank account in Switzerland, Mediapart can reveal. The funds held in the UBS account were, after it was closed in 2010, allegedly then transferred to Singapore. In an interview with Mediapart, Cahuzac has denied ever holding an account in Switzerland, while threatening legal action if the suggestion that he had was published, which Mediapart does indeed do here. Fabrice Arfi reports.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • How the Bettencourt affair led Sarkozy before the judge

    France

    This article has been censored A ruling by the Versailles court of appeal on July 4th 2013 has ordered that Mediapart must remove from its website all articles which contain extracts from the so-called ‘butler tapes’ at the heart of the Bettencourt affair. The penalty for not doing so is 10,000 euros per article per day (effective from July 21st). Mediapart has appealed against the ruling.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • How the Aga Khan was exonerated from taxes by Sarkozy

    International — Investigation

    In a letter signed in 2008, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy used exceptional powers to exonerate the Aga Khan, one of the world’s richest royals, from paying any form of tax in France, where he is a resident, Mediapart can reveal. The fiscal status was approved by then-budget minister Eric Woerth, mayor of, and Member of Parliament for, the town of Chantilly, north of Paris, where the Aga Khan initiated and largely funded the financial rescue of the town’s historic racecourse and equestrian centre. The letter, dated April 4th 2008 and exclusively revealed here, promised that the religious leader would benefit from an “exoneration of direct taxes, stamp duty and wealth tax.” Woerth is currently cited in two judicial investigations into suspected corruption, one involving the financial affairs of L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, the other into the sale of state-owned forest land to a horse-racing company in Compiègne, close to Chantilly. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Sailing away on 'ill-gotten gains'

    International — Investigation

    Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, high-living son of the president of Equatorial Guinea and vice-president of the country, wanted by France and the United States on charges of money-laundering and embezzlement, is on the point of purchasing one of the world’s largest luxury yachts (pictured) for the sum of 200 million dollars. Mediapart has discovered that a company was especially set up in Equatorial Guinea to carry out the acquisition of the vessel from the family of the late Saudi crown prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. It is a remarkable snub to a French judicial investigation into so-called 'ill-gotten gains' of several African leaders and which has uncovered compelling evidence that Obiang Mangue and his father have acquired massive personal fortunes through illegally stripping the assets of the small west-central African state, where an estimated 75% of the population live below the poverty line. Fabrice Arfi reports.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Gaddafi 'executed by French' – revelations of a Libyan agent

    International — Interview

    French agents helped capture and then kill Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011, according to a senior figure in the Libyan revolution. In an interview with Mediapart, Rami el-Obeidi, ex-head of intelligence for Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), said: “French agents directly executed Gaddafi.” The reason, says el-Obeidi, was that Gaddafi's threat to reveal details of his funding of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign “was taken sufficiently seriously for whoever at the Elysée to want the rapid death of Gaddafi”. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report on this explosive new twist in the saga of Sarkozy and Gaddafi's close ties.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Kadhafi « exécuté » : les révélations d’un agent libyen

    International — Interview

    Dans un entretien à Mediapart, Rami El Obeidi, ancien coordinateur du renseignement extérieur auprès du Conseil national de transition (CNT) libyen, assure que « des agents français ont directement exécuté Kadhafi ». Selon lui, « la menace d’une révélation d’un financement de Sarkozy en 2006-2007 a été suffisamment prise au sérieux pour que quiconque à l’Élysée veuille la mort de Kadhafi très rapidement ». L'attaque aérienne ayant visé le convoi de Kadhafi était « dirigée par la DGSE et des responsables à l’Élysée ».

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Senior French civil servant tells corruption probe Sarkozy signed off secret commissions

    International — Investigation

    A senior French civil servant has told a corruption investigation that former president Nicolas Sarkozy personally authorized the payment of secret commission payments from French armament contracts which are suspected of being used to illegally finance political activity. Mediapart can reveal that Patricia Laplaud, a former budget ministry financial supervisor of armaments sales gave a statement to the investigation, led by two Paris-based judges, in which she says that Sarkozy, when budget minister in 1994, ordered the secret cash transfers despite opposition from his ministerial advisors. Part of the sums were subsequently withdrawn in cash from Swiss bank accounts by Franco-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, who continued to serve until 2009 as an intermediary in weapons contracts organized by Sarkozy’s staff. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Past honeymoon with Assad unmasks Sarkozy 'intervention' call

    International — Investigation

    Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has finally broken the silence he has kept since failing to be re-elected in May, with a widely-reported call for urgent international intervention against the massacres perpetrated by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. The appeal was contained in a joint statement signed with Syrian opposition leader Abdulbaset Sieda, president of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council. Sarkozy’s return to the public platform was a thinly-disguised attack on his socialist successor, François Hollande, who the former president’s conservative UMP party have criticised as being ineffective and indecisive over the crisis in Syria. But it was also in stark contrast to the extent and nature of Sarkozy’s past dealings with Assad and his regime and which mirrored his ties with other Arab dictators. Fabrice Arfi reports. 

    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.