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.

Despite claims from the Élysée that Emmanuel Macron's former security aide no longer has any links with the presidency, Alexandre Benalla held a secret meeting with an African head of state in the company of a current member of the president's inner circle, Mediapart can reveal. At the end of May 2020 Benalla – who was sacked from the Élysée in July 2018 after being filmed beating up protesters in Paris - met with the new president of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, along with Élysée aide Ludovic Chaker. Chaker is a former soldier who was the first secretary general of Macron's political movement En Marche! in 2016, and a significant figure in the president's entourage. Fabrice Arfi, Antton Rouget and Marine Turchi report.

As the opening of the hunting season in France approaches this month, the country’s national hunting federation is up in arms over the banning this year of the practice of capturing songbirds with a gluey substance smeared on trees. It is is also displeased with pressure brought by the EU to limit the shooting of rare bird species. In response to increasing disapproval of the pastime, the federation claims that hunters provide a key conservationist role. ‘If there is anyone who can talk about ecology, biodiversity, climatology, it’s us,’ said its president this month. But official data tells a very different story.

Were it not for his wife Tatiana, Ukrainian mathematician and Soviet dissident Leonid Plyushch would almost certainly never have survived the special psychiatric hospital were he was locked up in 1973. Thanks to her endless, uncompromising campaigning, aided by strong international support, this Ukrainian intellectual eventually forced the Soviet regime to give way, and Leonid Plyushch and his family were freed into exile in January 1976. Leonid died in 2015 but Tatiana Plyushch still lives in their adopted village in the south of France, where Mediapart's François Bonnet went to meet her.

The global glass packaging firm Verallia produces two-thirds of new wine bottles in France and despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic it recently announced pre-tax earnings of 299 million euros for the first half of the year and paid out 100 million euros in dividends, most in the form of shares. Yet the company, which is owned by a New York-based private equity firm, has also announced a restructuring plan in France which will see the closure of one of its furnaces and the loss of more than a hundred jobs. Manuel Jardinaud reports on the mood of the company's workers in Cognac in south-west France as they fight to save their jobs.

In this second of a three-part series of investigations into the controversial sale by France to India of 36 Rafale fighter aircraft, Mediapart details how the then head of the French public prosecution services’ financial crimes branch, Éliane Houlette, shelved investigations into evidence of corruption behind the deal, despite the contrary opinion of her colleagues. France’s current president, Emmanuel Macron, and his predecessor, François Hollande, are cited in the allegations levelled in the case. Houlette has since justified her decision as preserving “the interests of France, the workings of institutions”. Yann Philippin reports. 

As France sizzles this weekend under an extreme heatwave, data shows that July this year saw the lowest rainfall in the country since that of 1959, and the scorched land is witnessing a severe drought that is now threatening the future of many farmers. In face of what has become a recurrent problem over recent years, some agronomists are calling for urgent and radical changes to conventional agricultural practices. Amélie Poinssot reports.

Over a period of three decades beginning in 1966, France detonated 193 nuclear bombs in atmospheric and undergound tests in its overseas territory of French Polynesia in the South Pacific. The vast fallout from the explosions caused tens of thousands of cancers among the local population according to victims’ associations, although the true, and possibly much larger, toll remains unknown. Meanwhile, the French and local authorities continue to dismiss evidence of the transmission of illnesses to the children of those directly exposed to the nuclear tests. Julien Sartre reports from French Polynesia.

French television star and producer Nagui was given a 100-million-euro three-year contract with public broadcaster France Télévisions, which is largely funded by a television licence paid by the general public, Mediapart can reveal. The revelation falls at a time when the public broadcaster has been forced to cut budgets and offer voluntary redundancies to save money, and will refuel debates about how much of the organisation's money should be spent on trying to keep its high-profile stars. The news that France Télévisions president Delphine Ernottee personally took charge of the negotiations also comes just days before a decision is due on whether she will reappointed when her own contract comes to an end. Michaël Hajdenberg and Antton Rouget report.

In France, as in other European countries emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the past management of the now subsiding crisis is under scrutiny, and many questions are being asked as to how the terrible toll of the virus might have been lessened by more appropriate action early on. In this report, Caroline Coq-Chodorge and Lise Barnéoud trace the chronology of events, interview those doctors involved on the frontline and reveal confidential documents from the French healthcare administration that show how the spread of the epidemic in France was out of control as of March 1st.