48 ans. À la création de Mediapart, j'ai d’abord suivi le Parlement, puis j’ai rejoint le service Enquêtes. Mes sujets de prédilection pendant des années : l'argent des élus et des partis, la corruption, la transparence, les conflits d'intérêts... De 2018 à 2019, je me suis consacrée à des sujets sur les migrations. Puis j’ai intégré la direction éditoriale élargie, de 2019 à 2023, comme responsable du pôle Société. Désormais, je me penche sur les droits des enfants et les violences qui leur sont faites.
Pour m’écrire : mathilde.mathieu@mediapart.fr
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 right-wing senator and billionaire Serge Dassault is at the centre of claims that he paid out millions of euros to buy votes when he was mayor of a town near Paris. Two independent judges investigating the affair want Dassault's parliamentary immunity as a senator to be lifted so they can probe deeper and if necessary detain the 88-year-old industrialist for questioning. But on Wednesday members of a Senate committee voted narrowly for their colleague to keep his immunity. This is despite the fact the two judges produced a dossier of the case against Dassault, including details of a Lebanese bank account allegedly used to channel 3 million euros to buy votes. Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg, Mathilde Mathieu and Pascale Pascariello report on the political and judicial fallout of an extraordinary vote by a Senate committee with a left-wing majority.
Disgraced French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac in April finally admitted holding a secret, tax-evading bank account abroad, the existence of which was first revealed by Mediapart in December 2012. Now Mediapart can lift some of the mystery that surrounded the complex web of structures which allowed Cahuzac to move his hidden funds across the globe, from Switzerland to Singapore via the Seychelles, allegedly with the help of a Dubai-based former board member of the Swiss bank Reyl & Co. Mathilde Mathieu, Fabrice Arfi and Dan Israel report.
Interpol has provided exceptional assistance, including confidential information, to a French lawyer hired since 2011 by its secretary general for his divorce proceedings, in order to help him win a lucrative contract with Libya as part of an Interpol-sponsored project to recover assets looted by the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Mediapart has gained access to correspondence demonstrating how Interpol’s Director of Legal Affairs used key contacts of the international police cooperation organisation to ensure that the authorities in Tripoli agree to hire the lawyer’s services. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
A worldwide treasure hunt is on to track down the massive, hidden fortune of late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his clan, bringing together a disparate group of mercenaries, from weathered former US intelligence operatives to be-suited business lawyers. All are gambling on big commission returns for the financial hides they return to the new authorities in Tripoli. “When you have 100 million euros to recover, there’s already some nervousness,” commented a director of Interpol. “When you have 1 billion, people are ready to kill. Here, we’re dealing with dozens of billions.” Mathilde Mathieu reports.
After his accounts were rejected by France's top constitutional court, the former president resigned from that body, to enable him to 'speak freely' on the issue. He and his supporters claim the ruling - the first of its kind - is 'unfair'. Meanwhile, as Mathilde Mathieu reports, the main opposition party the UMP now has to find 11 million euros to avoid potential financial ruin.
UBS and its subsidiary UBS France were earlier this year placed under formal investigation for conspiracy in illegal sales of banking services in a wide-ranging judicial probe into evidence suggesting the bank enabled wealthy French nationals to evade tax on assets deposited in undeclared Swiss accounts. Mediapart has gained exclusive access to documents that illustrate how UBS enticed wealthy French footballers to place their assets with the bank, and which raise further questions over its suspected complicity in tax fraud. Mathilde Mathieu, Michaël Hajdenberg and Dan Israel report.
The French body responsible for scrutinising election campaign funding has this week for a second time refused Mediapart’s request for an explanation of its decision to reject Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential election campaign accounts, despite a ruling in Mediapart’s favour by an official freedom of information watchdog. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
Former French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac (pictured) last month finally confessed to holding a secret foreign bank account over a period of some 20 years, but he has not publicly disclosed the sums that were paid into it, nor from where they came. However, there has been widespread speculation that the account was used to cash fees paid to Cahuzac for his services, during the 1990s, as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. Mediapart has now established that Cahuzac began a lucrative role as lobbyist for a drugs firm just months after leaving his senior post at the French health ministry where he was responsible for the market authorisations of medicines. Mathilde Mathieu and Michaël Hajdenberg report on an extraordinary conflict of interest that also raises serious questions over the conduct of Cahuzac’s former ministerial colleagues who allowed a drug he was lobbying for to continue to be subsidised by the social security system for several years after it was first earmarked to lose its status as a refundable medicine.
The official body that scrutinises election funding has refused to publish its reasons for rejecting Nicolas Sarkozy's accounts for the presidential campaign last year. Now Mediapart has obtained a ruling that the organisation must reveal the reasons behind its decision or risk flouting the law. Mathilde Mathieu explains the background to an obscure administrative wrangle with potentially wide-ranging consequences.
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.
Following Mediapart’s revelations of the fraudulent misuse of funds paid to French Members of Parliament to offset their professional expenses, and the lack of proper control over generous funds allocated to their parliamentary groups, the National Assembly’s administrative services have taken a small, but symbolic step in putting order into the chamber’s financial management. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
The French Catholic Church this week organized the reading of a prayer in churches across the country against President François Hollande’s plans to legalize same-sex marriages and to grant child adoption rights to gay couples. The ‘Prayer for France’ was read by priests and parishioners during the traditional yearly Assumption Day Mass on August 15th, directed at politicians "so that their sense of the common good will overcome special demands". While the move outraged gay rights groups and set the Church on a collision course with government, it also divided some congregations - nowhere more so than those in the Marais ‘gay quarter’ of Paris, where Mathilde Mathieu and Michaël Hajdenberg spoke to parishioners and priests.
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Et de trois. Une fois de plus, Patrick Balkany et son ancien bras-droit, Jean-Pierre Aubry, tous les deux mis en examen pour « blanchiment de fraude fiscale » (entre autres) et soumis à un strict contrôle judiciaire qui leur interdit de se rencontrer, se retrouvent au même moment, au même endroit, sur la même photo. Par hasard, sans aucun doute.
Pour Pièces à conviction, le journaliste Stéphane Girard a fait le reportage que Mediapart aurait dû réaliser depuis cinq ans. Consacrée aux abus dans les coulisses de l’Assemblée nationale, son enquête, diffusée ce mercredi à 23h10 sur France 3, nous embarque à Londres pour une plongée dans le (contre)-modèle britannique.
Voilà déjà une semaine que le député UMP Dominique Tian a reconnu publiquement, contraint et forcé, avoir planqué un compte en Suisse pendant des années. Voilà déjà une semaine que ce pourfendeur patenté de la fraude sociale (celle des autres, celle des « gagne-petit » qui grugent le RSA ou les allocs) a confessé avoir soustrait plus de 1,5 million d’euros au fisc français, avant de profiter d’une circulaire indulgente pour rapatrier discrètement ses billes en 2014. Et rien ne se passe ou presque.
Mediapart ne lâchera rien. Les citoyens ont le droit de savoir comment le financement des campagnes électorales est contrôlé en France. Avec quelle ardeur, quelle légèreté ou quel aveuglement. Alors que les révélations se multiplient sur les trucages opérés lors de diverses présidentielles, les documents relatifs aux instructions menées par la Commission nationale des comptes de campagne (CNCCFP) sont toujours tenus au secret. En ce vendredi 13 mars, les choses pourraient basculer.
La fortune les abandonne. Hier, Patrick Balkany (mis en examen pour « corruption » et « blanchiment de fraude fiscale ») et son bras-droit Jean-Pierre Aubry (mis en examen pour « complicité de corruption » et « blanchiment de fraude fiscale ») ont manqué de chance : ils ont été repérés discutant devant L’Anjou, un restaurant de Levallois-Perret, alors que le contrôle judiciaire auquel est soumis le second lui interdit de rencontrer le premier –précisément pour éviter qu’ils n’échangent sur l’information judiciaire en cours, menée par les juges Renaud van Ruymbeke et Patricia Simon.
