The Élysée cited business confidentiality when it refused to provide Mediapart with correspondence between presidential advisors and Amazon, Google and others giants of the digital world dating from 2017. However, Mediapart pursued the matter and after a lengthy process the administrative court in Paris found in our favour and we now have access to these documents. Like the recent 'Uber Files' controversy, they show just how closely aligned the thinking and approach of these technological groups is with that of Macron and his entourage. And also like the Uber case, they reveal that a business lobbyist from one of the groups – in this case Amazon - took part in Emmanuel Macron's 2017 presidential campaign. Alexandre Léchenet reports.
In early June around 30 indigenous Maasai people in the north-east of Tanzania were injured as they protested against being forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands. The authorities say the move is necessary to protect the area's extraordinary landscape and wildlife. But as Michael Pauron reports, lurking in the background to this affair are the interests of a private hunting company that has close ties to the royal family in Dubai.
President Emmanuel Macron's key aide in the Élysée, his chief of staff Alexis Kohler, has faced two investigations into an alleged unlawful acquisition of an interest and “influence peddling” over his family links with major shipping line MSC. The first was dropped back in 2018 but another was launched in 2020 and is still ongoing. The current investigation has unearthed some troubling documents for Alexis Kohler, whose official title is secretary-general of the Élysée. Not only do they show him to have been far more involved than thought with issues involving MSC while working as a civil servant, some potentially important documents and emails have also vanished from certain locations - though they have been retrieved elsewhere – in what appears to have been an attempt to remove the paper trail of his interventions. Martine Orange reports on the continuing investigation into President Macron's right-hand man.
A French judge has unexpectedly decided to reopen an investigation into the massacre at Bisesero in Rwanda in June 1994 and the actions of the French military in relation to it. This bloody event, part of the Hutu genocide against the Tutsi people, is seen as one of the most embarrassing episodes for France during the entire genocide. The investigating judge is reopening the case following an independent commission's report on the Rwandan genocide that was delivered to President Emmanuel Macron in March 2021. That commission, led by historian Vincent Duclert, said France bore “serious and overwhelming responsibilities” for events in Rwanda. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Alerts concerning the new French foreign minister's behaviour were sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' dedicated 'zero tolerance' anti-bullying unit at the start of 2022, a few months before she was appointed, according to Mediapart's information. An inspection by the ministry's internal inspectorate was due to be carried out at the French embassy in London where Catherine Colonna was ambassador at the time. That review has since been postponed. Ellen Salvi reports.
The new minister for solidarity and the disabled has been accused of rape by two women, claims he has strongly denied. Now Mediapart has spoken to a third woman who says that he tried to rape her at a party at his home in Paris in 2010. Damien Abad, who was appointed to the new government under Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on May 20th this year, did not directly respond to Mediapart's questions about these latest allegations but has “categorically” denied them in a statement. Meanwhile the issue has dogged the final days of the legislative election campaign ahead of the crucial second round of voting on Sunday June 19th. Marine Turchi and Ellen Salvi report.
In its recent powerful investigation into the exploitation of Haiti by France in the colonial past, The New York Times highlighted the predatory role played by the bank Crédit Industriel et Commercial. In fact, reports Laurent Mauduit, all French colonial banks practiced this same pillaging system of exploitation in Asia, Africa and the Antilles.
Documents unearthed by Mediapart in France’s national archives, and never before published, reveal that the true horrific extent of the covered-up massacre by police of Algerian demonstrators in Paris on the night of October 17th 1961 was very quickly made known to then president Charles de Gaulle and his advisors. They show that de Gaulle had instructed in writing that those who perpetrated the crimes be brought to justice. But in the end, no-one would ever be prosecuted over the slaughter, which historians have estimated claimed the lives of several hundred people, many of who drowned in the River Seine. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Following its purchase in 2015 of the power branch of French engineering firm Alstom, General Electric put in place a vast tax avoidance scheme involving subsidiaries in Switzerland and the US state of Delaware to syphon off hundreds of millions of euros that would otherwise have been subject to taxes in France, according to an investigation by Mediapart’s online partner newsroom Disclose. What’s more, the scheme appears to have had the blessing of the French economy and finance ministry.
An ongoing French judicial investigation into “witness tampering” centres on a secret operation in late 2020 to successfully convince a key witness in the probe into suspected Libyan funding of Nicola Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign, business intermediary Ziad Takieddine, to publicly retract his statements detailing the illicit funding. Mediapart has gained access to emerging evidence in the witness tampering case, and which throws further light on the links between members of the disparate group behind the operation and the former president’s entourage. Karl Laske and Fabrice Arfi report.
