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.
A book published this month in France, L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’), accuses Bernard Squarcini, head of the DCRI, the country’s domestic intelligence services, of mounting illegal surveillance operations against the media, and notably this website. In an exclusive interview with Mediapart, Yves Bertrand (pictured), the former head of the now-disbanded French police intelligence organisation, the Renseignements Généraux, reveals how for years the French presidential and prime-ministerial offices have carried out illegal surveillance operations against the media and political opponents, but now taken to even more sinister levels. “President Sarkozy is wary of everyone,” he says. “And as for journalists, don’t even mention them. That’s the most prized of prey. Those who carry out investigations are permanently covered.” Report and interview by Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske.
A French journalist who wrote an article (pictured) published in Le Monde revealing confidential French secret service documents on Osama Bin Laden allegedly first attempted to sell the files for 150,000 euros to US law firm Motley Rice, which represented families of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks. Guillaume Dasquié, now editor of French website Owni, held a Swiss bank account used for payments from the sale of secret documents. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
Jean-François Copé, leader of President Nicolas Sarkozy's ruling UMP party, is at the centre of a police investigation into the annulment, when he was budget minister, of a tax back payment of 6.2 million-euros demanded from a wealthy businessman connected to two key suspects in the so-called ‘Karachigate' illegal political funding affair. The tax adjustment, which was reduced by 4 million euros (document above), came after arms dealer Ziad Takieddine raised the case with Copé on the behest of Nicolas Bazire, managing director of luxury goods firm LVMH, according to a statement given to police by Takieddine's British former wife, Nicola Johnson. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
Fresh evidence has emerged implicating Nicolas Sarkozy's involvement in two controversial 1994 arms deals that lie at the centre of an investigation into suspected illegal political party financing via French weapons sales abroad. Mediapart has obtained access to an official document referring to Sarkozy's approval, when he was budget minister, of financial arrangements surrounding the sale to Saudi Arabia of three French frigates, a deal in which two French-imposed intermediaries were paid the equivalent of more than 200 million euros. Meanwhile, a key witnessin the investigation has said the then-budget minister had "necessarily" given his authorisation for the creation of a Luxembourg-based company set up to handle the payment of commissions paid out in a separate, simultaneous sale of French submarines to Pakistan.Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
Two Paris judges leading an investigation into suspected illegal political party financing via official French weapons sales abroad are now focusing their enquiries on the financial activities in Colombia of Thierry Gaubert, a longstanding close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy. Gaubert, a formal suspect in the political funding scam and a former aide to Sarkozy before he became president, used secret off-shore accounts to build a luxurious mansion in the Colombian mountains, on a guarded estate shared by an associate, Jean-Philippe Couzi. In this second exclusive report from Colombia, Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske reveal how Colombian police targeted Gaubert, as well as Couzi, for suspected money laundering, and the bizarre story of how the pair set up two bars by the names of ‘Nibar' (pictured) and ‘Nichon', the French equivalents of ‘Titty' and ‘Tit'.
Thierry Gaubert, a longstanding friend and aide of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was in September placed under formal investigation - one step short of being charged - for "aiding and abetting the misuse of company assets" over his role in a suspected political funding scam connected to French weapons sales abroad. In this exclusive report, Mediapart reveals how Gaubert built himself a luxurious, sprawling property (pictured) in Colombia, using funds hidden abroad, where his guest book resembles a list from Who's Who in France. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report from Nilo, Colombia.
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.
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.
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'"
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.
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.
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.
