Journaliste à Mediapart depuis sa création, en 2008, j’ai couvert la droite et l'extrême droite, avant de rejoindre le service « Enquêtes » en 2017.
• Livres : - Faute de preuves : une enquête sur la justice face aux révélations #MeToo (Seuil, 2021). - « Marine est au courant de tout...» : Argent secret, financements et hommes de l'ombre : une enquête sur Marine Le Pen (co-écrit avec Mathias Destal, Flammarion, 2017). - Informer n'est pas un délit(ouvrage collectif, Calmann-Lévy, 2015).
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.
After her party's successes in the recent European elections, the leader of the far-right Front National is striving to form her own multi-national political group at the European Parliament. The official reason is that such a grouping will strengthen the FN president’s political clout in the parliament. But as Ludovic Lamant and Marine Turchi report, there is another reason for setting up the group – and that is to enable the FN to get its hands on several million euros a year in EU funds. Thus this most eurosceptic of French politicians might end up using EU money to help support her attempt to win the French presidency in 2017.
Robert Ménard, co-founder of the renowned NGO Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières), which has mounted a fierce global campaign over almost a quarter of a century to promote freedom of expression and to defend journalists from persecution, was last weekend elected mayor of Béziers, a large town in southern France. But Ménard’s political ascension has proved to be a severe embarrassment for the NGO, for he was elected with the full backing of France’s far-right Front National party. With the help of Ménard’s former colleagues, Marine Turchi traces the bizarre path of the admired and reviled maverick activist whose early political affiliation was with a French Trotskyist party.
France is gearing up for municipal elections later this month when, political observers and opinion poll surveys forecast, the far-right Front National party is set to make significant gains. Its leader, Marine Le Pen, lays claim strong support among blue-collar workers, as illustrated by the vote the party attracted among a significant number of former left-wing heartlands during the 2012 presidential and legislative elections. This relatively recent development is often interpreted as a swing of allegiance on the part of a disillusioned electorate of the Left. But that perception is a myth according to the results of detailed studies by sociologists Nonna Mayer and Florent Gougou. They presented their research at a Paris conference on voting patterns for the far-right, where Marine Turchi recorded their sometimes surprising findings.
Right-wing MP Hervé Mariton led the parliamentary opposition to the controversial bill on same-sex marriage that recently passed into law. Now Mediapart can reveal that his parliamentary assistant has close links with the extreme right, and even stood as a candidate for a radical far-right group when she was a student. The MP insists he had no idea about the woman's political affiliations when he hired her and says that she is now leaving his employment. Marine Turchi reports on an affair that once again raises the issue of links between the mainstream UMP and the far right in French politics.
The right-wing UMP has won the country's most recent parliamentary by-election. But the party who have most to celebrate are the far-right Front national whose candidate came close to winning a seat that was once a socialist stronghold, picking up a massive 7,000 votes between the first and second rounds of voting. The FN's strong showing has now cast doubt over the Socialist Party's policy of supporting more moderate right-wing candidates when they are in head-to-head electoral contests with far-right politicians, forming what is known as a 'republican front'. Mathieu Magnaudeix, Marine Turchi and Stéphane Alliès report on the fallout from a high-profile campaign and on the future of such election pacts in the future.
Over the past eight months France has been locked in a fiercely divisive and often violent debate over the government’s same-sex marriage bill, which was finally enshrined into law last Saturday by President François Hollande. Gay rights groups have denounced mounting homophobia amid the hot contestation to the law, while opponents are due to stage a further mass protest in Paris on May 26th. Le Refuge is a national association that offers shelter, medical services and psychological counselling to youngsters who have been rejected and often made homeless by their families because of their homosexuality. It has seen a surge in requests for help since the debate kicked off in earnest last autumn, increasing five-fold over the same period one year earlier. Marine Turchi visited the association’s Paris centre and heard the distressing stories of those for whom it offers a lifeline.
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.
President François Hollande has condemned the former budget minister’s 'unforgivable fault' after the latter's confession about having an undisclosed Swiss bank account. But now questions are being raised about the French head of state's own handling of the affair. Did the president fail to act despite reportedly being given information months ago which suggested that Jérôme Cahuzac was lying?
The main French right-wing opposition party the UMP has been in turmoil following a disastrous leadership election last month that saw both candidates claiming victory and which led to a formal split among its Members of Parliament. There are signs that the two sides may be close to finding a way out of the immediate crisis amid talk of a new contest next year. But, as Marine Turchi reports, the party has not even begun to address its fundamental problems of ideology and strategy faced with the Far Right.
A friend and ally of far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen has been investigated by the fraud squad over his business dealings. No prosecution took place but the investigation did unveil the financial links between Frédéric Chatillon – whose firm helped Le Pen's recent presidential election campaign - and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. For his part Chatillon claims the top secret investigation was politically motivated. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
After the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party in France's presidential and parliamentary elections, various prominent party figures have publicly questioned the former president's tactic of lurching to the right in a bid to poach votes from the far-right Front National (FN). Joël Gombin, a researcher at the University of Picardy who specialises in studying the FN's electorate, says this policy should be abandoned, not only because it so manifestly failed - but also because it legitimised the Front National. He spoke to Marine Turchi.
As François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy battle it out head-to-head ahead of the second round of the French presidential election, they face very different challenges. For the Socialist Party's Hollande, with victory seemingly in his grasp, the aim is to maintain the same measured approach that has marked his campaign so far. For Sarkozy, however, the success of the far-right Front National in the first round has raised a dilemma. Should he court the FN's first-round voters – or instead focus on attracting voters from the political centre? At stake are not just Sarkozy's chance of winning the election, but the future of the right in French politics. First Stéphane Alliès and then Marine Turchi report on two contrasting campaigns ahead of the decisive vote on May 6th.
All his blog posts
The Mediapart Club
Join the discussion
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.
Après l’enquête de Mediapart sur les faits dénoncés par l’actrice Adèle Haenel, l’hebdomadaire « Marianne » publie une interview du réalisateur Christophe Ruggia déguisée en « contre-enquête ». Sauf qu’aucun contradictoire n’a été réalisé.
Par les faits qu’elle dénonce et par la rareté du témoignage principal dans un milieu (le cinéma) où l’omerta règne encore, l’enquête que nous publions est singulière. L’actrice Adèle Haenel sera l’invitée de notre émission lundi 4 novembre, à 19 heures, en direct sur notre site.
Mediapart avait demandé à la Commission nationale des comptes de campagne (CNCCFP) la communication des contrats des prêts russes du Front national et du microparti de Jean-Marie Le Pen. La commission avait refusé. Nous avions saisi la justice, qui nous a donné raison.
Invité d'une émission de France Culture consacrée au Front national – son fonctionnement, ses affaires –, Mediapart a été décommandé après que Jean-Lin Lacapelle, le secrétaire général adjoint du parti, a fait savoir qu'il ne viendrait pas si nous étions en plateau.
La campagne du Front national expliquée et analysée par des chercheurs qui travaillent sur ce parti depuis des années. Son programme, ses discours, sa stratégie, ses électorats, l’organisation de son appareil, son maillage territorial: c’est l'opération «FN, l'œil des chercheurs» que Mediapart lance pour les campagnes présidentielle et législatives.