Five days after his private funeral, hundreds of admirers turned out on Thursday in homage to the French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen at a ceremony held at the Paris church of Notre-Dame du Val-de-Grâce, including political figures from the hard- and far-right. The event capped numerous homages already paid to Le Pen, who died on January 7th at the age of 96, including from Emannuel Macron and his prime minister François Bayrou, and which have skirted the reality of the ideology behind Le Pen’s hate-filled outbursts, jibes and speeches throughout his long political career. Youmni Kezzouf dresses a list.

The OCCRP, the largest organised network of investigative media in the world, hid the extent of its links with the US government, this investigation can reveal. Washington supplies half of its budget, has a right to veto its senior staff, and funds investigations focussing on Russia and Venezuela. Yann Philippin and Stefan Candea report.

By hiding the closeness of its relationship with the US government, the world’s largest consortium of investigative journalism, the OCCRP, has played into the hands of the planet’s worst dictators, like Vladimir Putin, who sees a foreign agent behind any journalist who disturbs his regime’s status quo, writes Fabrice Arfi in this op-ed article.

After launching an investigation into the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and after subsequently inviting Mediapart and three other outlets to join the project, German public broadcaster NDR finally decided to shelve the report after senior editorial managers came under pressure from the OCCRP. Yann Philippin reports.

Singer, songwriter and composer Flore Benguigui reveals the reasons behind her departure from the band L'Impératrice. And breaks a taboo: in an environment she describes as one of ordinary sexism and humiliation, she lost her voice.

With the Baltic state seeking to enforce the use of the Latvian language in public media, the need to ensure that the sizeable Russian-speaking population in the country still has access to reliable information has become a critical issue. This is now the mission of Latvian journalist Inna Plavoka, the founder of an independent Russian-language local media outlet that is growing in popularity despite some hostility and suspicion after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Estelle Levresse reports.  

Donald Trump considers them the “enemies of the people.” As journalists in the United States worry about their future, a key question arises: what is the role of the media? In this op-ed article in the wake of Trump's win, publishing editor Carine Fouteau explains Mediapart's journalistic mission, which she says is based on corroborated, verified and well-documented facts published in the interest of citizens.

A demand from the Paris public prosecutor that far-right leader Marine Le Pen should be banned from standing for public office for five years has sparked widespread political debate. The call by the prosecution - during a trial in which the former presidential candidate and some of her party's officials face allegations over the misappropriation of European Parliament funds - has also led to intense legal discussion about the true impact this punishment might have on the far-right leader. Under current law it seems that any such ban would bar her from standing at the 2027 presidential election; but that she could continue to serve as a Member of Parliament. Fabrice Arfi and Michel Deléan explain.

The former head of France's domestic intelligence service, Bernard Squarcini, has gone on trial at a Paris court this week. The ex-spy chief, who served under President Nicolas Sarkozy, and his alleged accomplices within the state are suspected of having committed a variety of offences to help French billionaire Bernard Arnault’s multinational company LVMH. Fabrice Arfi reports on the issues at stake in the case.

The French authorities have been critical of the role that tech billionaire Elon Musk played in Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. Yet those same authorities remain oddly passive in the face of the media offensive led in France by billionaire Vincent Bolloré. As Antton Rouget reports, this is despite the fact that this summer's parliamentary elections in France, plus the funding of far-right politician Jordan Bardella's recent book, show that the regulatory system here is now outdated.