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

  • Exclusive: L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt's secret tax-dodging accounts and mystery payments

    France — Investigation

    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 and Michel Deléan

    Free access

  • Exclusive: British witness in French funding scandal hits back at ‘protected’ arms dealer

    International — Interview

    Nicola Johnson (pictured) is the British former wife of Ziad Takieddine, a Franco-Lebanese arms dealer at the centre of what has become known in France as the ‘Karachi Affair', involving secret political funding from commissions paid in French weapons sales abroad. She has become a key witness in the independent judicial investigation into the suspected scam in which several of Nicolas Sarkozy's closest aides and friends are implicated, and which is now engulfing the French President himself. In this exclusive interview with Mediapart and French weekly L'Express, Johnson speaks publicly for the first time about her husband's activities, his relations on high and how she once found a bullet shot through her car windscreen.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • 'Monsieur Africa' details '20m-euro gifts' from despots to Chirac and Villepin

    International — Investigation

    For decades he has enjoyed close personal and professional relations with French-speaking Africa's most prominent leaders, including notorious despots. Robert Bourgi (photo), dubbed ‘Monsieur Afrique' in France, is an advisor and go-between for both the French presidency and African heads of state. He created a political storm in September after publicly accusing his one-time boss, former President Jacques Chirac, along with former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, of receiving millions of euros in secret cash payments from several African leaders. Mediapart has obtained exclusive access to a statement he gave earlier this month to magistrates in which he details the cash payment claims, including an alleged lunchtime gift to Villepin of one million euros by the president of Equatorial Guinea. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • President Sarkozy 'bullied African leaders into deals with billionaire friend Bolloré'

    International — Interview

    The former head of an international maritime port management company has accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of bullying African governments into entering into contracts with the Groupe Bolloré, headed by the president's close friend Vincent Bolloré. In an exclusive interview with Mediapart, Jacques Dupuydauby (photo), who recently retired as chairman of Franco-Spanish group Progosa, says French-speaking West African leaders personally told him how President Sarkozy threatened them with a withdrawal of French support unless they agreed to hand lucrative port management concessions to the Groupe Bolloré. He describes the French president as Bolloré's "high-class travelling salesman", adding: "Under Sarkozy, the message is ‘If you don't do what we ask in giving such and such a thing to Bolloré, you will no longer be able to count on France's support'"

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • The plan for Gaddafi to help France free Ingrid Betancourt

    International — Investigation

    Franco-Lebanese arms dealer Ziad Takieddine is a key figure in what has become known as the ‘Karachi affair', involving alleged secret political funding from commissions paid in French weapons sales abroad. A judge leading an independent probe into the suspected scam last month placed Takieddine and two of President Nicolas Sarkozy's close friends and aides under formal investigation in the case. In a series of investigations that began this summer, Mediapart has revealed Takieddine's unusual role as intermediary and advisor in a number of French weapons sales, and his close relationship with several of President Sarkozy's inner circle of friends and advisors. Documents obtained by Mediapart now disclose how the arms dealer was involved in arranging for the French presidency the services of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to free former hostage Ingrid Betancourt (photo) from her FARC captors in Colombia. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • The arms dealer and his 'friendly' services for UMP leader Copé

    International — Investigation

    Documents obtained by Mediapart show that the head of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, Jean-François Copé, enjoyed more than what he maintains are purely amicable relations with a key suspect in the illegal political funding investigation in which members of the president's close entourage are implicated. For despite the UMP secretary-general's public claims that he "never had relations of a professional nature" with Ziad Takieddine, Mediapart can reveal that the Paris-based arms dealer paid for a visit for Copé to Lebanon, in which he organized a programme of meetings with the Lebanese prime minister and other senior political and business figures. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • French IT group Bull horned by Libyan internet espionage deal

    International — Investigation

    Amesys, a subsidiary of French IT company Bull, which provided former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi with technology to spy on emails and chat forums, has threatened former employees with legal action in a bid to stop them revealing to the media further details of the deal. In the negotiations to secure the contract, sealed with the Gaddafi regime in 2007, the company, operating under its former name i2e, delivered Tripoli with a sample of its internet spying capabilities in the form of eavesdropped personal messages exchanged by staff at a Paris university. The deal with Libya was one of several brokered by arms dealer and intermediary Ziad Takieddine, and enjoyed the backing of the then-French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • Senior Sarkozy aide pointed by scam probe evidence leaks

    France — Investigation

    Mediapart has obtained new information that further suggests a key suspect in an investigation into the illegal political funding scandal, known as the Karachi Affair, was given confidential details of evidence from the enquiry by one of President Nicolas Sarkozy's closest aides, former interior minister Brice Hortefeux (pictured). The fresh twist in the affair counters earlier statements by Hortefeux denying that he had had illegal access to the investigating file and had passed on secret details of a witness statement to Thierry Gaubert, a former advisor to Sarkozy now placed under formal investigation for suspected embezzlement. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • French judge finds key evidence in illegal funding probe

    France — Investigation

    A Paris magistrate investigating suspected illegal political party funding in France has obtained documents (photo), extracts of which are exclusively published here by Mediapart, which amount to the most significant evidence yet indicating that former Prime Minister Edouard Balladur's presidential election campaign may have been partly funded via French weapons sales abroad. While the events date from the 1990s, they lie at the heart of what has become known as the Karachi Affair, a fast-developing corruption scandal implicating current French President Nicolas Sarkozy and several of his senior political allies. Fabrice Arfi reports.

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • British divorcee becomes key witness in French political funding scandal

    International — Investigation

    A British woman has become the key witness in the ongoing judicial investigation into suspected illegal political funding in France from weapons sales abroad, and which is now engulfing the French presidency in a scandal that threatens Nicolas Sarkozy's future. Mediapart can reveal here exclusive extracts from testimony given to police by Nicola Johnson, who was divorced earlier this month from Paris-based arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, currently under investigation for his role as a principle intermediary in the suspected scam. Her statement details how: her former husband established extraordinary close relationships with senior French politicians, including the funding of lavish holidays for ministers. Takieddine, who Mediapart has already revealed pays no tax on his 40 million-euro wealth in France where he is fiscally domiciled, apparently escaped a tax control last year after the intervention of a "higher authority".

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • 'Everyone's in the merde': the secret cash funding scandal shaking down the house Sarkozy built

    France — Investigation

    After a week of startling developments, the French presidency was this weekend engulfed by yet more revelations over the illegal political party funding scandal dubbed as Karachi-gate, involving secret cash payments siphoned off from French weapons sales abroad, notably to Pakistan, which implicates both the French president and his close political entourage. Two of Nicolas Sarkozy's longstanding political servitors, Nicolas Bazire and Thierry Gaubert (photo), are now under official investigation over their alleged role in the affair, which includes the transport to Paris of suitcases stuffed with cash from a Swiss bank vault. Meanwhile, presidential advisor Brice Hortefeux, one of Sarkozy's closest friends, has been caught by phone taps informing Gaubert, while he was in police custody, of damaging statements made by his estranged wife, Princess Hélène of Yugoslavia. In this report on the latest developments in the case, Mediapart exclusively reveals excerpts of what Gaubert told the police, along with the official transcript of a phone conversation in which his daughter speaks of Sarkozy, Hortefeux and other senior officials as being "in the shit". Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • The French-built stealth offroader that may be hiding Gaddafi

    International — Investigation

    Amid continuing speculation over the whereabouts of deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Mediapart has obtained exclusive details of a highly sophisticated ‘stealth' four-wheel drive armoured vehicle sold by France to Libya in 2008 for the dictator's safe transport. The modified Mercedes can "instantaneously detect over 2,000 threats" according to French company Bull which developed the vehicle's security system (illustration) as part of a controversial weapons and security contract negotiated with Tripoli by President Nicolas Sarkozy's staff. The deal included equipment presented as "an inviolable solution to the Anglo-American espionage system". Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report on a deal that may still be ensuring mobile refuge for on-the-run Gaddafi.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    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.