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 minister François de Rugy quits after revelations about lifestyle and expenses

    France — Investigation

    François de Rugy, the environment minister and number two in President Emmanuel Macron's government behind prime minister Édouard Philippe, resigned on Tuesday 16 July following a string of revelations by Mediapart about his lifestyle as a minister, including grand dinners paid for out of the public purse. De Rugy quit just as Mediapart was about to make fresh revelations about his use of expenses as an MP. Michaël Hajdenberg, Antton Rouget and Fabrice Arfi report.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • How French minister and probity advocate enjoys the high life on public funds

    France — Investigation

    French environment minister François de Rugy, an outspoken campaigner for greater transparency in public office, is engulfed this week by Mediapart’s revelations of how he and his wife regularly organised grand dinner parties with fine wines and food provided for by the public purse, while also ordering the redecoration of their ministerial grace and favour apartment at a cost of more than 60,000 euros also paid for by public funds. His chief of staff has now been forced to resign after Mediapart also revealed this week how for 12 years she held on to an apartment allocated to her on subsidised rent by the Paris social housing department when she was in fact posted elsewhere in the country.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Marine Turchi, Michaël Hajdenberg and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • The threat to France's fight against white collar crime and corruption

    France — Investigation

    Concerns have been raised privately within the French justice system about the involvement of the government and in particular the Élysée in picking the successor to Éliane Houlette as head of the country's national financial crimes prosecution unit, the Parquet National Financier (PNF). This is because the PNF is currently handling two investigations which are particularly sensitive for the presidency. One is into the Russian security contracts involving former Élysée security aide Alexandre Benalla. The other probe is into President Emmanuel Macron's chief of staff Alexis Kohler over an alleged conflict of interest. Fabrice Arfi, Michel Deléan and Antton Rouget report.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Michel Deléan and Antton Rouget

    Free access

  • Friend of French prime minister to stand trial after 'assaulting' policeman

    France — Investigation

    A friend of French prime minister Édouard Philippe was arrested and placed in custody on Sunday June 23rd for having reportedly hit an off-duty police officer. According to legal sources he was, unusually, freed just a few hours later after having claimed – falsely - that he was the premier's diplomatic advisor. He is now due to face trial in November on charges that include passing himself off as a ministerial advisor. Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Matthieu Suc report

    by Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Matthieu Suc

    Free access

  • The abject intimidation of French investigative journalists

    France — Analysis

    A senior reporter from French daily Le Monde has been summoned for questioning later this month by the French domestic intelligence agency, the DGSI, over her investigations into the relationships of President Emmanuel Macron’s disgraced former aide, Alexandre Benalla. The move follows a recent attempt by the Paris public prosecution services to carry out a search of the offices of Mediapart, also following its reports into Benalla’s covert activities, and separate summonses for questioning this month by the DGSI of journalists who revealed the French government’s false claims denying the offensive use of French-made weapons in the war in Yemen. Fabrice Arfi, of Mediapart’s investigative reports team, details the new offensive against journalists who champion the public’s right to know, and the person leading the campaign against them, namely chief Paris public prosecutor Rémy Heitz.  

    by Fabrice Arfi

    Free access

  • Moscow man: the key role of a French intermediary in Benalla security aide affair

    France — Investigation

    In the unfolding saga of the Benalla affair, which involves President Emmanuel Macron's sacked security aide Alexandre Benalla, one man played a key role in the shadows. He is French middleman Jean-Louis Haguenauer, the man behind the Russia security contract negotiated by Benalla while the latter was still working as a key aide at the Élysée. Mediapart can reveal how over a period of 30 years Haguenauer cultivated a network of contacts in Russia, including close links with the Russian secret services. Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi

    Free access

  • Crackdown on journalists over exposé of French arms used in Yemen

    International

    Two journalists from the French online collective Disclose, dedicated to investigative reporting, have been summoned for questioning this month by France’s internal intelligence agency, the DGSI, following their revelations of the massive use of French-made weapons in the devastating war in Yemen. Together with a journalist from state broadcaster Radio France, they are officially suspected of “compromising national defence secrecy”, an offence that can carry a five-year jail term. In reality, the journalists exercised their professional duty to inform the public of a confidential military report that demonstrates how the government has concealed the truth of the deployment of French-made arms in Yemen by a Saudi-led coalition accused of war crimes.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Matthieu Suc

    Free access

  • Macron security aide scandal: the forged documents and true lies

    France — Investigation

    The long-running and still unfolding saga of the scandal surrounding Emmanuel Macron’s former close security aide Alexandre Benalla has prompted serious questions over the French president’s judgement about, and relationship with, his bodyguard, and also the secretive workings of the Élysée Palace and its senior staff. Those questions are heightened with documents revealed here by Mediapart, and the account of a former minister and his senior aide – who commented that Macron's entourage "didn’t protect him sufficiently” from a young man whose rise to prominence in the presidential office almost beggars belief.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi

    Free access

  • French Senate report into disgraced Macron aide opens rift with government

    France

    A damming report published this week by a French Senate commission of inquiry set up to investigate the scandal surrounding President Emmanuel Macron’s disgraced former security aide Alexander Benalla was dismissed on Thursday by French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe as being politically motivated. The senators found that the events behind the scandal, which began when Benalla was filmed assaulting people on the sidelines of a May Day march last year, and which have been followed by Mediapart’s revelations that the maverick aide has been negotiating personal security deals worth 2.2 million euros with Russian oligarch’s close to the Kremlin, are the result of “major failings” at the heart of the Élysée Palace, which placed at risk “the security of the head of state and, beyond this, the interests of our country”.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi

    Free access

  • Gaddafi spy chief tells French judges he oversaw 7m-euro payment for Sarkozy election campaign

    International — Investigation

    As part of their investigation into the suspected funding by the Gaddafi regime in Libya of Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, two French judges travelled to Tripoli earlier this month when they questioned, for the first time face-to-face, Gaddafi’s former spy chief, and brother-in-law, Mohamed Abdulla Senussi. Mediapart has gained access to extracts from the statements provided by Senussi, who detailed how he oversaw the payment of 7 million euros for Sarkozy’s campaign, as ordered by Gaddafi. He also confirmed that, as part of the deal, the former French president’s personal lawyer and friend Thierry Herzog was involved in moves to overturn an international arrest warrant issued against Senussi after his conviction in absentia by a Paris court for his part in the blowing up of a French airliner in 1989.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske

    Free access

  • New revelations on Macron aide's oligarch deals worth 2.2m euros

    International — Investigation

    Emmanuel Macron’s disgraced former personal security aide Alexandre Benalla, who also served as deputy to the president’s inner cabinet chief, organised from the Élysée Palace a private deal to provide protection services to a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin and who is suspected of ties to Russian organised crime. Benalla, who was initially dismissed from his post after assaulting people on the sidelines of a May Day march, last December also sold protection services to another Russian billionaire. The total of the two deals is worth 2.2 million euros, part of which was paid to Benalla in Morocco, Mediapart can reveal in this latest investigation into the growing scandal which, it is speculated, may be linked to the resignation announced this week of Macron’s most senior advisor, Ismaël Emelien.

    by Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi

    Free access

  • Revealed: France's lies over the genocide in Rwanda

    International — Investigation

    In a joint investigation, Mediapart and Radio France have revealed the contents of previously unseen documents relating to aspects of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, from the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana which sparked the massacres to illegal arms sales to the genocidal regime. The documents include a key report by France's overseas intelligence agency, the DGSE, on the genocide, which left close to one million people dead. Mediapart's Fabrice Arfi and Benoît Collombat of Radio France report.

    by Fabrice Arfi and Benoît Collombat (Radio France)

    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.