Ancienne journaliste à l'Usine Nouvelle, au Monde, et à la Tribune. Plusieurs livres: Vivendi: une affaire française; Ces messieurs de chez Lazard, Rothschild, une banque au pouvoir. Participation aux ouvrages collectifs : l'histoire secrète de la V République, l'histoire secrète du patronat , Les jours heureux, informer n'est pas un délit.
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.
Société Générale employee Jérôme Kerviel met with worldwide notoriety as the so-called 'rogue trader' who lost the bank almost 5 billion euros in reckless trading bets in 2007. He was sentenced to five years in prison – two of them suspended - and a staggering fine of 4.9 billion euros, a sentence upheld after he lost an appeal in October 2012. The bank has consistently claimed that Kerviel acted alone and kept his high-risk bets secret from his superiors. But in this interview with Mediapart, a key witness to Kerviel's appeal case, but who was never called to testify, explains why Kerviel's activities were necessarily known to the bank, which at best turned a blind eye. What's more, he tells Martine Orange, the concrete proof of this is still available in logged and stored data - but not for long.
The controversy surrounding the planned introduction in France of a new ‘eco-tax’ on lorries is fast-developing into a potentially vast political scandal over the conditions of a contract signed with a private company to operate and collect the levy. The tax scheme was initially devised by the previous, conservative-led government and former ministers are now under fire over the surprisingly generous terms of the agreement signed with Italian company Ecomouv’. Amid calls for the creation of a parliamentary commission of enquiry into the affair, a preliminary investigation was opened by the public prosecutor’s office on Wednesday to determine the legality of the tender competition. Martine Orange reports on the latest developments and the background to what has become a costly farce.
The fate of a small but flourishing telecommunications R&D company in Brittany, western France, is yet one more example of a takeover where financial interests are allowed to trample over all other concerns. At the end of this month, the 170 employees of Renesas Design France are due to laid off and the company closed down after its purchase by a US semiconductor firm which is transferring all of the French company’s numerous hi-tech patents and know how abroad. “Fifteen years of investment, research and development, of collective know-how, of aid from the state and local authorities have gone up in smoke,” said one staff representative. “It is an indescribable waste. We are going to lose skills that may take decades to recover.” Martine Orange reports.
Former Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre was this month convicted by a New York jury of a fraud that cost investors 1 billion dollars in a high-risk loan deal linked to the infamous subprime mortgages schemes. ‘Fabulous Fab’, as the 34 year-old Frenchman nicknamed himself, took the rap alone for a deal Goldman Sachs concocted as banks tried to pile out of toxic mortgage securities when the US housing market went belly-up in 2008. Martine Orange reports on how Tourre has been made a convenient and lone scapegoat for the wider crimes of Wall Street’s dishonest practices which led to the worldwide financial crisis - and for which it has never been brought to account.
The Printemps department store chain, one of France’s oldest and most famous, was last week bought by a Qatari investment fund for a reported 1.75 billion euros after months of secret negotiations with the group’s principal shareholders and amid bitter opposition by unions representing its staff of 3,000. France’s competition regulator gave the green light despite a preliminary investigation opened in June by the Paris public prosecutor’s office into allegations that the transaction process involved fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. In this opinion article, Mediapart economy and finance specialist Martine Orange argues that the deal illustrates the recurrent impotence of French law, and the unwillingness of government, to effectively rein in the excesses of rich and powerful wheeler-dealers.
In 2010 the former Société Générale employee was convicted in relation to a series of trades that cost the bank up to 4.9 billion euros. Last year the ex-trader lost an appeal against his three-year jail sentence. However, the saga continues. On 4th July Kerviel, who has always insisted his bosses knew what he was doing, will take his former employer to an industrial tribunal seeking 4.9 billion euros in damages – equal to the sum he is said to have lost the bank. His lawyer has meanwhile made a formal complaint alleging forgery and use of false documents. In particular the trader’s legal team has highlighted some curious discrepancies in the recordings made when Kerviel was questioned by his bank superiors as his huge losses became clear; recordings that went on to form the basis of the evidence that convicted him. Martine Orange investigates.
In a previous article, Mediapart described how steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal built his conglomerate on the ruins of Eastern and Western Europe’s restructuring steel industries, taking loans and subsidies but paying hardly any tax on the continent. In the second and concluding article of her investigation Martine Orange reports on how ArcelorMittal has based its financial branch in the desert of Dubai, reveals the curious network of tax-haven companies through which the Mittal family controls the operation, and wonders just why the group's results in Europe were so bad even during the good years for steel makers.
ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer whose chairman and CEO is London-based Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (pictured), pays hardly any taxes in Europe. Making the most of the tax-break competition between European Union countries, the group juggles transfer pricing and optimal fiscal gains for its financial flow. But behind what may appear to be a common sense business approach that makes the most of what’s on offer lies a secretive organisation that prevents any proper scrutiny of the real economic performance of ArcelorMittal’s plants or subsidiary companies. In this first of a two-part investigation, Martine Orange traces the steel giant's history and lifts the veil on its hidden practices.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy (pictured), who once decried "a financial capitalism" which had "imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it", has joined the ranks of star conference speakers for the investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs for whom he is to address a conference in London on June 3rd, described by the bank as "an exclusive forum that will bring together institutional investors and risk managers". Since leaving office last year, Sarkozy, who is keeping open his future return to politics, has clocked up a number of speaking engagements for investment banks. As Martine Orange reports, the former president's sudden enthusiasm for a sector where nothing passes for free raises a number of questions, not least that of conflict of interest both past and present.
While the number of people living in poverty in France rises, and the standard of living for the vast majority of the population has either fallen or stagnated, a minority of the richest income earners have become better off, according to the latest study of ‘Household income and wealth’ published this week by the French national institute of statistics and economic studies, INSEE. Martine Orange analyses the grim figures.
French finance minister Pierre Moscovici is at the centre of allegations that the government was involved in a cover-up to support Jérôme Cahuzac after Mediapart revealed last December that the then-budget minister, leading a crackdown on tax fraud, held a secret bank account abroad. In this lengthy interview with Mediapart’s Laurent Mauduit and Martine Orange, Moscovici defends his role during the four months in which he stood by Cahuzac, despite the mounting evidence presented by Mediapart that his junior minister and one-time friend consistently lied about holding hidden funds abroad. Moscovici reveals that the former budget minister, who finally confessed earlier this month, after repeated denials, to holding the account, declined to provide a written statement requested by tax authorities last December as to whether he held or not a secret account. But surprisingly that did not cause alarm among his colleagues. “Faced with the firmness and the number of his denials,” Moscovici says, “I had the tendency and the wish to believe Jérôme Cahuzac.”
François Hollande has acknowledged economic reality by accepting that France can no longer meet its goal of cutting its budget deficit to 3% of GDP this year. In doing so he is abandoning one of his key campaign pledges, and he is now preparing to bring his economic policy squarely into line with that of most other European countries, which inevitably raises the spectre of the infamous 'structural reforms'. Are their parallels with President Mitterrand's notorious economic U-turn in 1983? Martine Orange reports.
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En hommage à Alain Le Garrec, ancien élu PS du 1er arrondissement, mort du Covid-19. A tous les élus, militants, petites mains négligées des appareils politiques, tombés lors des élections municipales, pour que vive la démocratie.
Le 6 février, Les Echos affirmaient sur leur site que l’ex-pdg de la Société générale avait gagné son procès en diffamation contre Mediapart. C’était faux. Le quotidien a depuis changé le titre mais pas le fond. A aucun moment, il n’est dit que Mediapart a été relaxé par la 17e chambre correctionnelle. Mise au point.
Au lieu de prendre les 16 millions de dollars de récompense qui lui étaient promis, un lanceur d’alerte, ancien responsable de la Deutsche Bank, préfère y renoncer et dénoncer la collusion entre le système financier et les autorités de contrôle. Afin que toute son action ne soit pas vidée de son sens. Respect.
A quoi s’engagent les candidats aux européennes ? Alors que la campagne européenne commence, plusieurs ONG (Attac, Finance Watch, le Secours catholique, Ccfd - Terre solidaire, l’institut Verblen) ont souhaité réunir mardi 6 mai plusieurs candidats aux européennes pour les interroger sur les propositions et les combats qu’ils seraient prêts à mener, s’ils étaient élus au parlement européen.
Les dirigeants européens n’en finissaient plus de se féliciter, jeudi. La mine réjouie, tous saluaient le grand succès du retour de la Grèce sur les marchés. Athènes avait réussi à lever 3 milliards d’euros auprès d’investisseurs internationaux, avec le soutien des grandes banques internationales, dont Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan et Deutsche Bank.
