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.
The famous Printemps department store on the boulevard Haussmann in Paris (pictured) is up for sale. On the surface it is just another routine high-end Paris property transaction. But behind the scenes, reveals Mediapart, one of the current owners is preparing a 'predatory' financial deal that would see a handful of its top executives walk away with up to 500 million euros. Meanwhile the real cost of the sale will fall on the department store's staff, who could be left without a job or put on less secure work contracts. Martine Orange reports.
The nominations last weekend of Anne Lauvergeon and Jean-Claude Trichet as France’s representatives on the re-vamped board of European aerospace and defence group EADS was anything but a surprise, argues Mediapart’s finance and economy specialist Martine Orange. Both are from an elite composed of graduates of France’s grandes écoles and former senior civil servants who are on a life-long merry-go-round of top jobs and fat salaries, and whose purportedly immeasurable talents have overseen the break-up and bankruptcy of the French economy.
The French government’s proposed top 75% income tax rate, applicable to individuals annually earning more than 1 million euros, was struck down by the country’s Constitutional Council last weekend after it ruled that it breached a fundamental principle of equality for taxpayers. This was the application of income tax per individual instead of the usual method of per household. How could the government, now accused of amateurism, and especially the budget and finance ministries, have ignored a technicality to which they had been previously alerted by the parliamentary finance commission? While President François Hollande has promised to redraft the terms of the tax, there is every indication that, if it is revived, it will return severely watered-down. Mediapart business and finance specialist Martine Orange analyses a fiasco that begs the question of whether the tax was scuppered from the inside.
Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister accused of having a secret Swiss bank account until 2010, has amassed considerable wealth from his work as a hair transplant surgeon and consultant. Mediapart can reveal the name of the man who handles the minister's personal wealth, the ultra-discreet Hervé Dreyfus (see photo, right). Mediapart can also disclose it was Dreyfus to whom Cahuzac was talking during his now infamous telephone conversation when he was accidentally recorded talking about the Swiss account – whose existence he still continues to deny. Fabrice Arfi, Dan Israel, Mathilde Mathieu and Martine Orange investigate the financial background and contacts of France's under-fire budget minister.
While attention in France and elsewhere in the world last week was mainly focused on the presidential race between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, there were also many Congressional contests taking place across the United States. An investigation has revealed that a number of French groups were involved in funding candidates at those elections. Officially the fund-raising was carried out by American employees of those French businesses rather than the firms themselves. But, curiously, these staff members tended to favour Congressional candidates who were close to their own company's interests. Martine Orange reports.
Earlier this month, telecommunications company Alcatel-Lucent announced it was to axe 1,430 jobs in France, representing 15% of its French workforce, and affecting every site in the country. Mediapart finance and business writer Martine Orange analyses the steady decline of a former flagship of French industry since its merger with America’s Lucent, when what was supposed to be a new, world giant has crumbled amid a series of strategic errors and the fratricidal effects of Europe’s deregulated telecommunications market.
When French publicly-owned nuclear giant Areva bought Canadian mining company UraMin in 2007, it boasted of having secured major uranium deposits in Africa. But five years on, no uranium has ever been mined there, and Areva has had to write off nearly 2 billion euros in its accounts. Here, Martine Orange investigates the roots of the fiasco and attempts to cover up what promises to become a major industrial scandal, along with the intrigue surrounding the company's sacked and furious CEO Anne Lauvergeon (pictured).
This week international ratings agency Moody's raised the prospect of France losing its coveted triple-A credit rating and which is essential to efforts to calm the crisis in the euro zone. Martine Orange argues here that while the move by Moody's may have been predictable, the timing of the announcement has given the ratings agency a role in the forthcoming French presidential elections. Graver still, the blackmail it represents on the political debate is in danger of producing a catastrophic, irredeemable collapse of the European common currency.
The fire sweeping international stock markets brings the danger of a massive recession closer, amid frantic efforts by governments and central banks in Europe and America to ease the crisis. But, argues Martine Orange, the world of finance is starring into an abyss, only too aware that it is ‘game over' on three decades of easy money, with the public purse now empty and incapable of mounting a rescue as it did in 2008.
The rumour mill is working overtime in the French business world and at Renault, where the carmaker's CEO Carlos Ghosn is fighting to keep his job after the fiasco of false espionage allegations against three top executives which saw them fired on false pretences, and led to the resignation of the company's N°2, Patrick Pelata. Officially all is well again, but Ghosn now faces a fierce battle against those determined to have his head for other reasons, not least French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Martine Orange and Laurent Mauduit report on the malaise surrounding the man at the wheel of one of France's industrial giants.
In March, the French government finally announced it is to scrap the so-called tax shield, le bouclier fiscal, which caps yearly private tax payments at a ceiling of 50% of yearly income. The controversial measure has above all benefited the very wealthy, who account for 60% of the 591 million euros to be paid back in refunds for the 2009 tax year alone. But, argues Martine Orange, the new tax reforms due to become law by this summer do little, if anything, to change an inequitable system that has scandalized public opinion.
French oil giant Total paid zero euros in corporate tax in France in 2010 despite posting a profit of more than 10 billion euros. It is one among France’s five most profitable companies which enjoy a generous corporate tax break cutting millions of euros from their fiscal bills. The French government meanwhile appears to be in no hurry to close the loophole. Martine Orange reports.
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.
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.
