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.
Award-winning French actress Adèle Haenel has accused the prominent French filmmaker Christophe Ruggia of inappropriate “touching” and of “sexually harassing” her when she was aged between 12 and 15. Haenel, now aged 30, whose story is supported by numerous documents and witness accounts, describes the director's behaviour as “paedophilia”. In this lengthy investigation, Mediapart reveals the long journey the actress has undergone, from the period when it was “impossible” to speak out to the point when continuing to stay silent had become “unbearable”. In a written statement, Christophe Ruggia has “categorically” denied the claims. Marine Turchi reports.
Claude Sinké, aged 84, a former local election candidate for the far-right Front National – now called Rassemblement National – is in custody for the attack on a mosque in Bayonne in south-west France on October 28th 2019. He told detectives his aim was to “avenge the destruction” of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris from a fire which he blames on Muslims. Marine Le Pen and the rest of the RN leadership have been quick to distance themselves from their former activist. But Claude Sinké had been adopted as a candidate for the far-right party in 2015 despite posting hate-filled messages on Facebook. Marine Turchi and Matthieu Suc examine the far right party's handling of its supporters and look at the growing threat posed by right-wing extremists in France and across Europe.
The suspect arrested for the deadly attacks last Wednesday on a synagogue and Turkish restaurant in the German city of Halle has said his acts were driven by far-right ideology and a hatred of Jews. The shooting and bombing rampage followed a series of attacks around Europe by ultra-right groups, prompting the EU police agency Europol, in a recent confidential report, to urge increased cooperation to contain the problem. But Europol also gave a chilling warning that the extremists “are attempting to win over members from the military and security services” in order to build “combat skills”.
The far-right Rassemblement National – the former Front National – was in serious financial difficulty after the Parliamentary and presidential elections in 2017 and was bailed out by a loan of 8 million euros. That loan, Mediapart can reveal, came from French businessman Laurent Foucher who has a range of commercial interests in Africa and who is close to Nicolas Sarkozy's former right-hand man Claude Guéant. The loan was transferred from a bank in the United Arab Emirates but questions still remain over the precise origin of the money. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
A string of revelations from Mediapart about his lifestyle and use of public money led to the resignation of François de Rugy, environment minister and number two in the French government, on July 16th 2019. Since then the former minister has been on a PR offensive, helped by friends in the media, seeking to prove that his name has subsequently been “cleared” and that Mediapart's revelations had been “refuted”. This is obviously untrue. Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi look back over the facts of the case.
The Paris prosecution services announced on Friday that they have launched a preliminary investigation into suspected “rape” and “sexual assault”, notably of minors, in connection with the activities in France of the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein and others connected to him. The investigation, which has received claims by ten people in France that they were victims or witnesses of sexual violence committed by Epstein and his entourage, will seek not only evidence of crimes that may have been committed in France, but also those involving French victims or perpetrators committed abroad.
French environment minister François de Rugy resigned on July 16th following Mediapart’s revelations of his use of public funds to host with his wife grand dinner parties with fine wines and food when he was speaker of the National Assembly, and later to redecorate his grace and favour apartment as environment minister at a cost to the public purse of more than 60,000 euros. The revelations prompted two administrative inquiries, which were published on Tuesday. Far from the claims by the ex-minister, once an outspoken campaigner for greater transparency in public office, that he has been exonerated, their findings confirm the events and amounts reported in Mediapart's investigations.
François de Rugy, the environment minister and number two in the government who quit on Tuesday July 16th after revelations about his lifestyle and use of public money, employed ministerial chauffeur-driven cars for his own personal use, Mediapart can reveal. Several former government ministers have raised questions over de Rugy's apparently excessive use of such vehicles. Michel Deléan, Michaël Hajdenberg, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.
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.
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.
To fund its campaign for this month’s European Parliament elections, the French far-right Rassemblement National party (the renamed Front National) has raised around 4 million euros through so-called “patriotic” loans from its members and supporters, to who it has promised a 5% interest rate. The party will submit the amounts raised, with interest, in its application for a post-election refund of campaign spending that is granted to parties and paid out of the public purse. The generous interest payments paid to its lending members and supporters will cost the taxpayer around 200,000 euros, and the party says it plans employing the same strategy in future elections. Marine Turchi reports.
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.
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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.