The decision by Paris prosecutors to start an investigation into confidential tape recordings involving a former presidential aide – a probe which led to an attempt to search Mediapart's offices - came after an intervention by the prime minister's office, Mediapart can reveal.
After Mediapart published details on January 31st of secret recordings of a meeting between former presidential security aide Alexandre Benalla and his friend and former colleague Vincent Crase – in breach of their bail conditions - the prosecution authorities decided to launch an investigation over an alleged breach of privacy. It was as part of this quickly-organised investigation that prosecutors sought on Monday February 4th to search Mediapart's offices. Mediapart refused to allow the search on the grounds of its right, under French press freedom laws, to protect the identity of its sources.
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Mediapart has been able to establish the story behind this investigation, whose only object is to identify this website's sources relating to the Benalla affair, which has rocked the state since the summer of 2018. It emerges that the investigation was launched by Paris prosecutors after the office of prime minister Édouard Philippe had passed on rumours about the location and nature of the secret recordings that it had received from a journalist on another publication.
The story began on Thursday January 31st after the publication of Mediapart's story involving secret recordings between Benalla and Crase in Paris on July 26th 2018. The two men are under formal investigation after they were filmed assaulting protesters in May last year. That same Thursday a journalist from weekly news magazine Valeurs Actuelles raised two questions about the story with staff at the prime minister's official residence Matignon. The magazine said it understood that the conversation that was secretly recorded between Benalla and Crase had taken place in the flat belonging to the head of the prime minister's security unit the Groupement chargé de la Sécurité du Premier Ministre or GSPM. And it wanted to know if the recordings revealed by Mediapart were official recordings, in other words whether they had been carried out by the intelligence services.
Having questioned the official concerned, the prime minister's office told the magazine: “The head of the GSPM denies being involved in any way whatsoever in the breach of Messrs Benalla's and Crase's bail conditions. She says she knows Mr Benalla but has never met Mr Crase and that to her knowledge he has never come to her home. She also denies that her partner could have organised this meeting in her absence.” The prime minister's office also confirmed that no official phonetap had been authorized in relation to the two men during the period involved.
The result was that Valeurs Actuelles did not publish a story. Mediapart contacted the journalist involved, Louis de Raguenel, who confirmed having sent the questions to the prime minister's office. “If it was proven that it was my questions which led to the attempt to search Mediapart, I'd find that shocking. I was doing my job as a journalist,” he said.
The prime minister's office meanwhile explained that they wanted to avoid rumours and to act with “complete transparency” which was why they had told the prosecution authorities in Paris the following afternoon about the questions they had been asked and the replies they had given. Another media outlet had apparently asked similar questions of prime minister Édouard Philippe.
“In no way did it involve reporting under article 40 [editor's note, the article of the criminal law code which obliges a person in a position of public authority to report a crime],” said the prime minister's office. “It simply concerned sharing with the justice system in complete transparency some aspects of the response sent to the press and which are liable to concern a current judicial case,” added the premier's office, alluding to the various proceedings targeting Alexandre Benalla.
So it was simply on the base of this “alert” from the executive that the new Paris prosecutor Rémi Heitz opened an investigation over alleged “breach of privacy” and “unlawful possession of devices or technical means of a nature enabling the interception of telecommunications or conversations”.
Whose privacy did Mediapart allegedly breach when publishing the article on January 31st? The prosecution here faces a problem, as no one has made a complaint that their privacy has been violated. As Le Monde has stated, this could undermine the legality of the procedure.
Once the investigation was launched the Paris prosecutor Rémi Heitz took just three days – including the weekend – and without a warrant from an independent judge to arrange a search of Mediapart, the first in its history. It was on the morning of Monday February 4th that two prosecutors plus three police officers arrived at Mediapart's editorial offices to carry out a search, which Mediapart refused to allow.
The prosecution authorities declined to respond to several requests for a comment.
The Paris prosecutor Rémy Heitz, who is taking personal charge of the investigations relating to the Benalla affair, was only appointed last year. He was nominated in October by the government after an appointment process that provoked some controversy. This was after the Élysée turned down the three candidates who had been put forward by the Justice Ministry and the independent organisation supervising judges the Conseil Supérieur de la Magistrature.
Last October the justice minister Nicole Belloubet stated that “because they carry out public policy set out by our government … [prosecutors] come within the scope of a line management”. The justice minster also intervened in the current affair by lying to the National Assembly on Tuesday February 5th about the attempt by prosecutors to search Mediapart's offices, in suggesting that Mediapart only agreed to hand over the tapes after the attempted search. In fact Mediapart had already agreed to hand over the tapes to judges investigating the original Benalla affair.
Meanwhile the prime minister Édouard Philippe has accepted that he, as well as the president, had intervened in Rémy Heitz's nomination, as he wanted to be “sure” that he would be “perfectly at ease” with the person appointed to be the new Paris prosecutor.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter
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