Finances

Football has become a new playing field for financial institutions preying on debt, as illustrated by documents from the whistle-blowing platform Football Leaks and analysed by the European journalistic consortium European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), in which Mediapart is a founding member. In one example, a British company called XXIII Capital had bought up 73 million dollars’ worth of debts resulting from transfers of players in England, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. These were then included in a financial product offered on Wall Street and subsequently on the stock exchange of the Caribbean tax haven of the Cayman Islands. Michael Hajdenberg, Michel Henry and Yann Philippin report.

Prime minister Manuel Valls tells French finance leaders he wants Paris to be ‘the financial capital of the future’ after Brexit.

Government wants new measures to give anti-money laundering unit Tracfin access to finances of those listed on a database of wanted people.

After Paris talks with Greek counterpart, French finance minister offered support for new timeframe or terms but not cancelling the debt.

Yanis Varoufakis will have a meeting with Michel Sapin in Paris on Sunday ahead of plans by Greece to renegotiate its debt burden.

Former French finance minister Pierre Moscovici will take up the important economic and monetary affairs portfolio despite some German misgivings.

Leading French film producer lambasts huge fees paid to the country's cinema stars whose demands are largely met via subsidies paid to the industry.

Earlier this month it was revealed that French tycoon Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH, the wealthiest person in France and the fourth wealthiest worldwide, has applied for dual Belgian nationality. The French conservative opposition was quick to cite it as an example of the flight of capital that will follow higher taxes the government is to impose on the country’s top income earners, while President François Hollande decried Arnault's lack of patriotism. Mediapart Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel sets out here how tax evasion has become a colossal and insitutionalised business at the centre of the economy. Fighting it has never been more urgent, yet little effort - if any - is being made to prevent it or to sanction those who are bleeding society of vital resources.  

New president says France's stagnant economy has been ravaged by the euro crisis and a decade of mismanagement.