Journaliste au pôle Enquêtes, j'ai rejoint Mediapart en janvier 2011, après avoir été pigiste à Libération (1986-1987), reporter spécialisé justice au Parisien (1988-1998), et grand reporter en charge de l'investigation au Journal du Dimanche (1999-2010).
J'ai publié plusieurs livres: "Un magistrat politique. Enquête sur Jean-Claude Marin, le procureur le plus puissant de France" (Pygmalion, 2015), "Qui veut la mort du juge d'instruction?" (Les Carnets de l'Info, 2007), et "Adjugé, volé. Chronique d'un trafic à Drouot" (Max Milo, 2011).
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.
At the end of an eight-day trial in Paris of five prefects charged with embezzling public funds, prosecutors have demanded a 30-month suspended jail sentence and a 75,000-euro fine for Nicolas Sarkozy’s former chief of staff and ex-interior minister, Claude Guéant, who they described as playing “the leading role” in a scam that siphoned off 210,000 euros in cash reserved for police investigations. Michel Deléan reports.
Claude Guéant, Nicolas Sarkozy's former chief of staff and interior minister, one-time national police chief Michel Gaudin and three other top officials who worked for the ex-president are in court this week, accused of misappropriating public funds by receiving tens of thousands of euros in cash payments. The money was siphoned off from a ministerial fund supposed to pay for police investigations. Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan reports.
In the last week four cases of alleged corruption, fraud, abuse of position or negligence involving prominent figures in French society have ended with no one being punished. In two cases the defendants were acquitted, in another no sentence was passed, while in the investigation concerning former government minister and current head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, the prosecution said the case should be dropped. Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan considers whether the French justice system is giving way when faced with certain high-profile political and financial cases – and if so, why.
In a case as bizarre as it is unusual, two French journalists were last month arrested in a luxurious Paris hotel on suspicion of the attempted blackmail of Morocco's King Mohammed VI. Éric Laurent and Catherine Graciet are accused by the Moroccan authorities of demanding 3 million euros in exchange for not publishing their book of damaging revelations about the Rabat regime. Mediapart has obtained access to documents from the French judicial investigation which demonstrate that the case is far more complex than it first appeared. Sting or set-up? Michel Deléan reports.
The man arrested after a thwarted attack on a train last Friday was known to intelligence agencies in several countries, including France. Yet Ayoub El-Khazzani, 25, was still able to board a busy Paris-bound train after acquiring an assault rifle and ammunition. Michel Deléan and Louise Fessard ask if European secret services again let a potential terrorist through the net – or whether surveillance on so many potential suspects is simply impossible.
Last Friday a French court acquitted former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of aggravated pimping charges, relating to his regular participation in group sex orgies with prostitutes. It followed on the acquittal in May, in an unrelated case, of former conservative minister Éric Woerth of charges that he manipulated senile L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt to obtain cash sums, and of influence peddling to obtain a job for his wife in exchange for awarding Bettencourt’s wealth investment manager with the Légion d’honneur. The unsuccessful prosecutions prompted some conservatives, and their allies, to call – and not for the first time - for an end to the French system of examining magistrates, the independent judges who lead major crime investigations carried out in the field by police, and who alone have the ultimate decision on whether to press charges. But in this op-ed article, Mediapart’s legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan argues that such calls are a recurrent knee-jerk reaction on the part of those whose distaste for investigating judges is rooted in the latter’s independence in face of the rich and powerful, as demonstrated over several decades of French judicial history.
Former government minister and the treasurer of Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign, Éric Woerth, has been cleared in two separate trials resulting from the extraordinary saga of the Bettencourt affair. But photographer François-Marie Banier has been sentenced to prison for his role in abusing the frailty of France's richest woman, billionaire L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, from whom he received up to 414 million euros. Also jailed for abusing Bettencourt's frailty was her former wealth manager Patrice de Maistre. The jail sentences are the climax of a long-running saga that has gripped France, involving secret tapes made by Bettencourt's butler, claims that a circle of advisors and hangers-on preyed off the ageing billionaires, and amid allegations of covert political funding of the right-wing UMP party. At one point former president Nicolas Sarkozy had himself been placed under formal investigation over the affair, though the case against him was later dropped. Woerth, meanwhile, was acquitted both of 'receiving' illicit cash for party funding via Maistre from Liliane Bettencourt – even though judges said there was a “strong suspicion” that some money had been handed over - and, in a separate trial, of 'influence peddling'. The judges' decision to acquit the former minister, while eight other defendants were convicted, means that in effect they have 'de-politicised' the affair. Michel Deléan reports.
Former French minister Claude Guéant and a former director-general of the French national police force, Michel Gaudin, are to stand trial later this year on charges of misappropriation of public funds, Mediapart has learnt. The judicial investigation into the two men was prompted by an official administration report which found that Guéant received a secret monthly tax-free bonus of 10,000 euros in cash between the summer of 2002 and up to the summer of 2004, paid out of funds destined for police activities, while he served as chief-of-staff to then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Michel Deléan reports.
The trial this week of former minister and conservative UMP party treasurer Eric Woerth, charged alongside the former wealth investment manager of L'Oréal heiress and billionaire Liliane Bettencourt with influence peddling, provides a graphic account of backscratching and favour-mongering in the salons and private clubs of French high society and, more importantly, an unseemly intimacy between the political world and finance. Woerth is accused of arranging for Maistre to receive the Légion d’honneur – France’s highest award of civil merit – in exchange for his hiring of Woerth’s wife as a highly-paid advisor in Bettencourt’s personal wealth investment company Clymène. If found guilty, the two men each face a maximum sentence of ten years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros. Mediapart has gained access to the document prepared by magistrates summarising the evidence against the pair. Michel Deléan reports.
The trial of ten men accused of profiting from the dementia-suffering multi-billionaire Liliane Bettencourt enters its final stages on Monday, after three weeks of hearings. The court in Bordeaux has heard the extraordinary detail of how a disparate group of defendants, including high-society dandies, wealth managers, lawyers, solicitors and a former minister, gravitated around the fortune of the L’Oréal cosmetic company heiress, as first revealed by Mediapart in 2010. This week the court in Bordeaux will proceed with the last cross-examinations, before hearing the final arguments of the defence and prosecution. Mediapart’s legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan, present in court since the start of the case, reports on the outcome so far.
After predictable procedural wrangles – plus some unforeseen delays – the long-awaited Bettencourt trial got under way in Bordeaux last week. Those on trial, who include a former minister in Nicolas Sarkozy's government, stand accused of either directly preying on the frailty of L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt or of profiting from it. Eight of the accused gave evidence during the week, all struggling to hide their dismay at being in the dock. The first was writer and photographer François-Marie Banier, a close confidant of Bettencourt from whom he received some 414 million euros, and who told the court he understands nothing about the world of money and business. “I'm not a spoilt child or a dandy,” he insisted. Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan was in court to witness the start of this extraordinary trial.
The French Minister for War Veterans, Kader Arif, a close ally of President François Hollande, on Friday became the third member of the country’s socialist government to resign amid a corruption scandal. His resignation was announced 24 hours after Mediapart revealed his offices had been searched by police investigating allegations of favouritism and fraud in the awarding of contracts worth several million euros to companies run by Arif’s relatives by a socialist-run regional council in his fiefdom in south-west France. The junior minister’s resignation is another severe blow for Hollande who, after making transparency in public office a key theme of his term in office, has already been embarrassed by the forced resignation of budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac for tax evasion and that of overseas trade minister Thomas Thévenoud for failing to pay income tax. Mathieu Magnaudeix and Michel Deléan report.
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Je ne veux pas d’antisémites, de négationnistes, de racistes, de xénophobes, d’islamophobes, d’homophobes ni de franchouillards souverainistes aux plus hautes fonctions de l’Etat. J'irai voter le 7 mai.
Évoquer des « prises d'otages » ou du « terrorisme » pour disqualifier les mouvements sociaux actuels n'est pas meilleur pour la démocratie que ce qu'on prétend combattre.
En presque cinquante ans de carrière, David Bowie a expérimenté une multitude de créations, sans commettre aucune faute de goût. Promenade subjective en musique et en images.
