Diplômé de l'IEP de Grenoble et du Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) de Paris, j'ai démarré ma carrière en 2000 comme journaliste économique, d'abord spécialisé dans les technologies, puis les entreprises. Avant Mediapart, j'ai travaillé pour le magazine Futur(e)s, comme indépendant, à l'agence Reuters, au Journal du Dimanche, puis à Libération, aux services économie puis investigation.
Dans ces médias, j'ai couvert de nombreux secteurs de l'économie française (aéronautique, automobile, santé, industrie, transports...) et enquêté sur des affaires économiques (Airbus, crash du vol Rio Paris d'Air France, Mediator, accident SNCF de Brétigny, fortune belge de Bernard Arnault, affaire Qatar-Veolia...) puis politico-financières (Tapie, Dassault). Je suis le co-auteur du livre Dassault Système (Robert Laffont), avec ma consoeur de France Inter Sara Ghibaudo.
J'ai rejoint Mediapart au services enquêtes en mars 2015. Spécialisé dans les affaires financières, de fraude fiscale et de corruption, je travaille notamment sur les "leaks", ces fuites de données massives qui ont nourri les enquêtes Football Leaks ou Malta Files, publiées par Mediapart avec ses partenaires du réseau European Investigative Collaborations (EIC).
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.
Ali Benarbia, the former Manchester City and Monaco player who became a prominent television sports pundit on French television and radio, has been told to pay back taxes of just under 4 million euros by the French tax authorities. Mediapart has learnt that the former Algerian international was paid via a fictitious company in Qatar and claimed to be living in the Middle Eastern country. In fact, he and his family were resident in Paris, tax investigators found. Yann Philippin and Matthieu Suc report.
Mediapart has learnt that the prosecution authorities in Switzerland are investigating the former French football star and ex-head of European football body UEFA Michel Platini for alleged fraud over a 1.8 million euro payment he received in 2011. That payment was made by Sepp Blatter, then head of world football's governing body FIFA, who also faces a similar probe. Yann Philippin reports.
The French financial crimes prosecution unit the Parquet National Financier (PNF) has written to the Portuguese authorities asking to question the Football Leaks whistleblower Rui Pinto. They also want full access to the 70 million or so confidential documents that he has obtained on the world of professional football. Pinto is currently on trial in Portugal charged with computer hacking, violation of private correspondence and attempted blackmail, which together carry a possible jail term of 25 years. The move by the French prosecutors is good news for Pinto, however, as it supports his claim that his sole motive was to expose corruption and fraud in the sport. Yann Philippin reports.
French police phone tap transcripts seen by Mediapart reveal that former football star Michel Platini, who served for eight years as head of the sport’s European governing body UEFA, and who is at the centre of separate investigations in France and Switzerland into corruption and fraud, claimed he had been offered “help” with his legal situation by President Emmanuel Macron. In March 2018, Platini met with the French president at the Élysée Palace when, according to a French journalist and friend of the former France international who was also present, his legal affairs were discussed. The Élysée, meanwhile, has denied any interference with the justice system.
Mediapart can reveal the contents of phone taps and two reports by gendarmes that led to serious questions over the conduct of Éliane Houlette, then head of France's anti-corruption prosecution unit the Parquet National Financier (PNF). Those reports led to the Paris prosecutor calling for a preliminary investigation into allegations of “influence peddling”, “collusion” and “breach of confidentiality” concerning Éliane Houlette, who stood down as head of the PNF in June 2019 having been its boss since its creation in 2013. However, though prosecutors eventually opened a preliminary probe in September 2019 for “breach of confidentiality” in an ongoing investigation, progress in this potentially explosive case seems to have ground to a halt. Fabrice Arfi, Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
Shortly after a committee of world football governing body FIFA in February 2015 controversially recommended that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar could be played in winter, the then FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke secretly met with Qatari businessman Nasser al-Khelaifi, president of French football club PSG and chairman of beIN Sports, who was thanked by Valcke hours later for a gift of a watch worth 40,000 euros, according to phone text messages revealed here by Mediapart. Al-Khelaifi denies he was behind the gift. Swiss prosecutors, meanwhile, have dropped their probe of the two men over suspected bribery, which included Valcke’s free use of a luxurious villa bought by al-Khelaifi in Sardinia. Yann Philippin reports.
In a televised address on Monday evening when he announced the lockdown on public movement to contain the Covid-19 virus epidemic is now extended into May, French President Emmanuel Macron admitted “our country was not sufficiently ready for this crisis”. But while the unpreparedness can be traced back to its predecessors, the French government has failed with its strategy for the urgent procurement of a vital piece of equipment that frontline healthcare staff sorely lack: protective masks. In this second investigation into the fiasco, Mediapart details the blunders that continue to place healthcare workers in danger, and how the business world has been more effectively provided for than hospitals.
An investigation by Mediapart has revealed the chaotic management at the highest levels of the French state over the crucial issue of providing protective masks to help tackle the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Our probe, which has analysed the situation since January and is based on numerous witness accounts and documentary evidence, highlights the hidden shortages, the unreliable health instructions, the neglected offers of help with importing masks, the continuing shortage of stocks and the way that some companies have been favoured. It also reveals the lies that have accompanied this mismanagement. Meanwhile hundreds of nurses have become infected with the virus. Yann Philippin, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.
Key documents seen by Mediapart shed new light on the award of the 2022 football World Cup to Qatar. The documents, written to then French president Nicolas Sarkozy by his sports advisor, relate to a lunch that took place at the Élysée Palace in 2010, just days before the crucial vote to decide the tournament’s host country. They reveal that the then boss of European football ruling body UEFA, Michel Platini, had been “reluctant” to back the Gulf state, but had been convinced to switch his vote to it by the end of the meeting with the French president and key figures from Qatar. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
At a court appearance in Lisbon this month, Rui Pinto, 31, the Portuguese whistleblower behind Football Leaks, the largest ever exposé of documents and correspondence detailing widespread criminal behaviour in the world of professional football, ranging from fraud and tax evasion to match-fixing and political corruption, was ordered to stand trial on 90 charges related to his alleged hacking activities, when he will face a maximum sentence of 25 years in jail. Yann Philippin and Miguel Prado report.
Documents obtained by French investigating judges show how the former head of the International Association of Athletics Federations, Lamine Diack, “coordinated” the votes of African members of the International Olympic Committee in 2013 to help ensure Tokyo was awarded the 2020 Games. Meanwhile just before and after the vote, an offshore company linked to Diack's son received a total of 2.3 million dollars from the Japanese bid committee. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
In June 2019 Michel Platini, the former head of European football's governing body UEFA, was interviewed by police as a witness over the circumstances of the award of the 2022 football World Cup to Qatar. Two former colleagues of Nicolas Sarkozy were also questioned about a lunch hosted for Qatar's crown prince by the French president in 2010, attended by Platini, just days before the controversial vote to give the tournament to the oil and gas-rich state. Now the French financial crimes prosecution unit has launched a judicial investigation into the affair over alleged “corruption”, Mediapart has learnt. Former French football star Platini has strongly denied any wrongdoing. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
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L'OCCRP, le plus grand réseau mondial de médias d'investigation, a demandé à Mediapart de faire « des corrections » sous 48 heures dans notre enquête sur l'OCCRP et de présenter des « excuses ». Mediapart a refusé, parce que nous maintenons l’intégralité de nos informations. Nous publions les sept points soulevés par l'OCCRP ainsi que nos réponses.
The editor-in-chief of OCCRP, the world's biggest network of investigative media, asked Mediapart to make “corrections and apologies” within 48 hours regarding our investigative article about OCCRP. Mediapart refused this request, fully stands by its reporting, and publishes its full answers to the seven points raised by OCCRP.
Notre partenaire Mediacités, site d’investigation en régions, célèbre son lancement à Lyon avec une série d’enquêtes sur les coulisses financières du football, basée sur les documents Football Leaks.
En annonçant sa volonté de poursuivre Mediapart pour « violation du secret de l’instruction » au sujet de notre article sur ses 102 lingots d’or exfiltrés du Luxembourg, la maire de Puteaux cherche à identifier nos sources en évitant de répondre sur le fond.
