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.
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.
The European Parliament has alerted the European anti-fraud office OLAF to its suspicions that the French far-right Front National party has misused the legislature’s funds allocated for the payment of parliamentary assistants. Mediapart has gained access to a letter sent by European Parliament president Martin Schulz to French justice minister Christiane Taubira this week in which he details his concerns over “the scale” of the problem, involving 20 assistants to Front National Members of the European Parliament, most of whom are listed on the anti-EU party’s organisation chart as officials based at its headquarters near Paris. Ludovic Lamant and Marine Turchi report.
The government, the Left and most leaders on the Right have joined calls for “national unity” or a form of national union as the French nation collectively mourned those killed in Wednesday's murderous attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Senior figures across the political spectrum will also take part in Sunday's 'Republican march' in Paris as an act of solidarity. But already some politicians on the hard right, and notably those in the far-right Front National (FN), have raised doubts about the national consensus. In particular the FN's president Marine Le Pen has reacted angrily to the fact that so far she has not been invited to the weekend march. As Mathieu Magnaudeix and Marine Turchi report, the far-right has in fact already started to play on the fears of French citizens in the wake of the massacre.
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.
France’s far-right Front National party has sought a loan of 40 million euros from Russian contacts, according to information obtained by Mediapart. After the party’s leader Marine Le Pen last weekend confirmed it had been lent 9 million euros from a Moscow bank, a senior party official has told Mediapart that this was a “first instalment” and that another 31 million euros “will follow”, a claim refuted by Le Pen. Meanwhile, Russian media reports have speculated that the Russian bank deal could not have been reached without approval by the Kremlin. Marine Turchi reports.
France’s far-right Front National party has obtained a loan of 9 million euros from a Russian bank. The loan, from the First Czech Russian Bank, was obtained after lengthy lobbying of the Russian authorities by party leader Marine Le Pen and other party officers who have been welcomed in Moscow by senior politicians close to President Vladimir Putin. Marine Turchi reports on the development of the surprisingly close relations knotted between the Front National and Russia's leading officials before the loan was agreed, the precise origins of which remain unclear.
The stand-up comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, whose one-man show was banned earlier this year in France and who has been convicted of anti-Semitism, is setting up a new political party to rival the far-right Front National. His co-president will be Alain Soral, the anti-Semitic publisher and essayist who has split with Marine Le Pen's far-right party on the grounds that it is too “pro-Israeli” and that he has been “betrayed” by a senior FN official. According to documents seen by Mediapart the new party is to be called 'Réconciliation Nationale' or 'National Reconciliation'. The two leaders are said to be hoping for a dissolution of the National Assembly before 2017 so the new organisation can get its hands on state funding of political parties. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
In recent days six people have been placed under formal investigation in connection with the presidential election financial scandal that is rocking the main right-wing opposition party, the UMP. Judges are investigating a system of fake invoicing by communications firm Bygmalion in 2012 in which they unlawfully billed the UMP rather than Nicolas Sarkozy's election team for work they did organising campaign rallies. This was apparently done to avoid the Sarkozy campaign breaching strict rules on how much presidential candidates can spend. This growing scandal is now potentially a major threat to Sarkozy's political comeback, though the former president himself claims he knew nothing of the affair or even the name Bygmalion at the time. Here Mathilde Mathieu, Ellen Salvi and Marine Turchi give a guide to the main players in the so-called Bygmalion affair and the issues at stake.
France's far-right Front National party won a quarter of the popular vote in May's European elections, albeit on a low turnout, as xenophobic, nationalist parties across Europe made significant gains. The result seemed to vindicate FN president Marine Le Pen's strategy of trying to change the party's image, shedding the anti-Semitism of the past and donning a cloak of respectability. But in a detailed history of the Front National published last month, researcher Valérie Igounet shows that the new image is just a veneer that cracks whenever the ghosts of the party's past rear their heads. Meanwhile the party has simply replaced Jews with Muslims as the principal target of its attacks. Igounet explains her findings to Mediapart’s Joseph Confavreux and Marine Turchi.
Debts of nearly 80 million euros, a party leader who had to step down over an election funding scandal, warring factions, public attacks, leaked allegations that senior party figures and their relatives have been milking its finances for their own benefit and continuing scandals surrounding its talismanic figure Nicolas Sarkozy... France's main opposition party the UMP seems on the brink of a political abyss. Indeed, one senior figure in it has claimed that the right-wing party is “already dead”. Mathilde Mathieu, Ellen Salvi and Marine Turchi report on a party crisis that shows no sign of abating and could end in its destruction.
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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.
