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.
Mediapart can reveal how during the Paris terror attacks on Friday night security service agents hastily removed France's prime minister Manuel Valls from his home which is just 300 metres from the scene of one of the restaurant shootings. At the same time, however, witnesses have complained that it took police around ten minutes to arrive at the scenes of the shootings as the gunmen rapidly made their murderous passage through the capital without once encountering a police unit. Karl Laske and Louise Fessard report.
A document published by Mediapart detailing how the Gaddafi regime in Libya agreed to secretly fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign is genuine, according to the conclusions of an expert analysis ordered by a French judge. The evaluation, involving highly sophisticated technology, was carried out as part of a judicial investigation into a complaint lodged against Mediapart by the former president for for ‘forgery and use of forgery’. The emphatic conclusion follows on a graphologists’s report that found the signature on the document was indeed that of Muammar Gaddafi’s spy chief, Moussa Koussa. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Declassified reports from France's foreign intelligence service show how Nicolas Sarkozy when president helped a senior figure in the Gaddafi regime escape from war-torn Libya in 2011, Mediapart can reveal. They show that Muammar Gaddafi's ex-chief of staff Bashir Saleh was taken to France in November 2011 with the aid of the French presidency and businessman Alexandre Djouhri. However, Saleh later fled France after Mediapart published details of a letter addressed to him outlining the Gaddafi regime's agreement to fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
During the Paris terrorist attacks in January, four customers taken hostage in a kosher supermarket were shot dead, and four others seriously wounded, by a man claiming to have targeted the Jewish store in the name of Islamic State. The gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, was subsequently killed by police when they stormed the store. Mediapart can reveal that the automatic weapons found by his body were identified by Slovak police as having been bought late last year by a Lille-based dealer in decommissioned military arms, but who has astonishingly never been questioned about his eventual contact with Coulibaly. Karl Laske reports.
Maurice Dufresse is a former head of the French foreign intelligence service’s technical support department - a sort of real-life Gallic equivalent to Ian Fleming’s fictional ‘Q Branch’ within Britain’s MI6. The publication five years ago of his book of anecdotes and analysis of his quarter of a century in French intelligence unleashed the wrath of his country’s spy chiefs, who accuse him of compromising national security. The final chapter in this battle for freedom of expression will be concluded in September. Karl Laske reports.
In April 2012, Mediapart revealed a document recovered from the archives of the toppled regime of late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi detailing its agreement to fund Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. The letter, signed by Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Moussa Koussa, was addressed to Bashir Saleh, head of the regime’s multi-billion-dollar Libyan African Portfolio investment fund. Following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime, Saleh found asylum in France. But after Mediapart’s report, and while he was the object of an Interpol ‘wanted’ for his arrest and extradition back to Libya where he faced fraud charges, Saleh subsequently fled to South Africa. Mediapart can reveal how French magistrates have established that Saleh’s last-minute flight on May 3rd 2012 was organised by Alexandre Djouhri, a businessman close to Sarkozy’s longstanding chief of staff Claude Guéant. But also present when the two men met in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower in the early evening of that same day was Sarkozy’s domestic intelligence chief, Bernard Squarcini. Karl Laske and Fabrice Arfi report.
Jany Le Pen, wife of the founder of France's far-right Front National party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has held a secret bank account in Switzerland, according to information obtained by Mediapart. That brings to three the number of hidden Swiss accounts associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen, and France's special prosecutor for financial fraud is now understood to be investigating the former FN president's financial affairs in Switzerland. The affair also throws the spotlight on socialite Jany Le Pen, Jean-Marie's second wife, to whom he has been married for 24 years. Though she usually steers clear of party political issues, Jany Le Pen has on occasions acted as the FN founder's de facto emissary. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi look at the new allegations and examine the profile of a woman who has shared Jean-Marie Le Pen's life for more than a quarter of a century.
The honorary president of the far-right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was the economic beneficiary of a undisclosed trust in Switzerland which was overseen by his butler and which contained 2.2 million euros in its bank account, according to information received by Mediapart. Gold ingots and coins made up 1.7 million euros of the sum involved. The revelation of the undeclared account, which was at the HSBC bank and then moved to the Compagnie bancaire helvétique (CBH), is set to provide fresh embarrassment for the Front National which is already the subject of a a judicial probe over campaign funding, and which has been hit by a damaging public split between Jean-Marie Le Pen, its former president, and his daughter Marine Le Pen, its current president. Jean-Marie Le Pen could now face investigation for tax fraud or for making false declarations to public authorities. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
Secret text messages hacked from a senior official at the Kremlin highlight an intriguing coincidence between the Front National's support for the annexation of Crimea and the payment in subsequent months of 11 million euros in Russian bank loans to its president Marine Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie for party funding. SMS messages between two Russians refer to Marine Le Pen's recognition of the results of the Crimean referendum on March 17th, 2014, and the fact that she should be “thanked” in some way for it. The following month Jean-Marie Le Pen's micro party received a 2-million-euro loan from the offshoot of a Russian state bank subsidiary, while in September 2014 the Front National borrowed 9 million euros from the Moscow-based First Czech Russian Bank. Marine Le Pen has dismissed any link between the party's policy on Crimea and the loans. Agathe Duparc, Karl Laske and Marine Turchi investigate.
In a dramatic development Claude Guéant, ex-chief of staff to President Nicolas Sarkozy and a former interior minister, has been placed under formal investigation for “laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud as part of an organised gang”, “forgery” and “use of false instruments” in connection with the probe into claims that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi illegally funded Sarkozy's successful 2007 presidential election campaign. Investigators want to know the origin of more than 500,000 euros that was transferred into his bank account in 2008 and part of which he later used to buy a flat in Paris. Experts in the art world have cast doubt on Guéant's explanation that the money came from the sale of two paintings by 17th century Dutch artist Andries Van Eertvelt.
The murder of a policewoman and the bloody siege at a Jewish supermarket carried out by a known associate of the two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo massacre indicates that an organised group was behind last week's terror attacks. Mediapart has had access to documents from an anti-terrorist investigation in 2010 showing that two of last week's gunmen were involved back then with a radicalised French network that was considering future “martyr operations”. These were supermarket hostage taker Amedy Coulibaly and Charlie Hebdo massacre suspect Chérif Kouachi. As Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report, the revelations will inevitably raise questions about whether more could have been done by the intelligence services to prevent last week's bloody events.
Mediapart has already revealed how France's Front National received a direct loan of 9 million euros from the First Czech Russian Bank, while Jean-Marie Le Pen's election funding association borrowed 2 million euros to Vernonsia Holdings Ltd. Now in an interview with Mediapart the party's founder and honorary life president has confirmed the existence of a third Russian loan to the far-right movement. Le Pen also said that his funding association had borrowed a total of “20 million euros”. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
