J'ai rejoint Mediapart en mai 2011, après avoir été été journaliste à Libération de 1994 à 2011.
J'ai publié: L'assassin qu'il fallait sauver (Robert Laffont, 2025), De la part du Calife (Robert Laffont, 2021), Avec les compliments du Guide (avec Fabrice Arfi, Fayard, 2017), Les cartels du lait (avec Elsa Casalegno, Editions Don Quichotte, 2016), La Mémoire du plomb (Stock, 2012), Le Vrai Canard (avec Laurent Valdiguié, Stock, 2008, réédité en Points Seuil, 2010), Putsch au PS (collectif Victor Noir, Denoël, 2007), Machinations (avec Laurent Valdiguié, Denoël, 2006, réédité chez Pocket), Nicolas Sarkozy ou le destin de Brutus (collectif Victor Noir, Denoël, 2005), Des coffres si bien garnis, enquête sur les serviteurs de l'État-voyou (Denoël, 2004), Ils se croyaient intouchables (Albin Michel, 2000), Le banquier noir (Seuil, 1996).
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.
During the 1980s, the Spanish government launched a dirty war against members of the Basque paramilitary separatist group ETA by creating an assassination organization that hid behind the name of GAL (for Anti-terrorist Liberation Groups). Between 1983 and 1987, the GAL killed 27 people and wounded 30 others, including innocent bystanders, in a campaign of assassinations and car bombings that spread terror across the Basque regions of northern Spain and south-west France. While it was later established how the GAL were led and funded by the Spanish government and police services, it is now alleged that numerous French police officers were recruited into the GAL hit squads to carry out murders on their own patch. Former Spanish deputy police commissioner and convicted GAL operative José Amedo Fouce has published a book in which he recounts terrorist actions committed by French police officers, and how their covert roles were covered up on high. He provides further detail in this interview with Karl Laske, including the key role of a French officer in a number of killings and whose true identity remains a secret today.
Judges investigating suspicions that senior politicians, including Nicolas Sarkozy, were implicated in the use of kickbacks from defence deals to illegally fund a presidential campaign have uncovered a dramatic new piece of evidence. The document, published here by Mediapart, shows that as budget minister Sarkozy signed a letter backing the complex set-up that led to the illegal payments. The document, which dates from 1994, contradicts claims from the former president that he had no involvement in the affair. Its discovery coincides with moves to get Sarkozy and two other former ministers investigated by a special court that handles allegations of offences committed by ministers in the line of duty. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
Mohammed Ismail (pictured), a former aide to Saïf al-Islam, the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has confirmed claims that Gaddafi funded the 2007 election campaign of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Mediapart can reveal. “Part of the funds went through North Africa Commercial Bank in Beirut, and from there to a bank account in Germany affiliated with Ziad,” Ismail told Mediapart, referring to Ziad Takieddine, a Paris-based businessman and arms dealer who worked as a key advisor to Sarkozy’s aides in their dealings with the former Libyan regime. “Other parts were funnelled through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland,” he added. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
A senior aide to the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has revealed that Gaddafi personally told him that his regime illegally funded Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign to the tune of 20 million dollars. Moftah Missouri, who was Colonel Gaddafi’s personal interpreter, who was given the rank of ambassador and who also served as a minister in the regime, made the disclosure in an interview with French state television channel France 2, to be broadcast Thursday evening. During the interview, also confirms the veracity of a document published by Mediapart in April 2012 in which Gaddafi's funding of Sarkozy’s campaign is detailed. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
Ziad Takieddine, who was a key intermediary between Sarkozy's entourage and the regime of Colonel Gaddafi and an important figure in the alleged illegal funding of the 1995 presidential campaign of Sarkozy’s political mentor and former prime minister Edouard Balladour, has been detained by police who suspect he was preparing to quit the country. The Franco-Lebanese businessman, who is under formal judicial investigation and forbidden to leave France, is said to have paid 200,000 euros to secure a Dominican Republic diplomatic passport (see above). Fabrice Arfi, Karl Laske, Michel Deléan and Albert Michel report.
Anti same-sex marriage protests have grown increasingly radical in France in recent weeks as the government's bill on the issue goes through Parliament. The organisation responsible for stoking up the political temperature – which has led to some violent attacks - is a small group known as 'Printemps français' or 'French Spring', whose name is a deliberate echo of the 'Arab Spring' revolutions of North Africa and the Middle East. And behind this group, Mediapart can reveal, is a 52-year-old former paratrooper. Karl Laske, Marine Turchi and Mathieu Magnaudeix report.
The mayors of several towns in the southern suburbs of Paris at the centre of a suspected corruption scam involving allegations of the fixing of public procurement contracts, bribes and influence peddling have still not been questioned by police who opened an official investigation into the graft claims more than five years ago. The allegations, including threats of violence, mystery gifts of luxury vehicles, holidays between mayors and those they award contracts to, paint a disturbing picture of connivance and graft, and raise serious questions about why the official investigation has stalled. Karl Laske reports.
A judicial investigation into the suspected illegal financing of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election bid has finally vindicated the testimony of Claire Thibout (pictured), an accountant for L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt who first revealed in a 2010 interview with Mediapart how vast cash withdrawals from the billionaire’s bank accounts were made shortly before meetings between Bettencourt’s wealth manager and Sarkozy’s campaign treasurer. Karl Laske reports on the latest developments in the investigation, in which Sarkozy is expected to be questioned in the coming weeks.
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.
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.
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 ».
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.
