An international investigation called 'Dirty Payments', conducted by Mediapart and 20 other global media outlets, reveals the billions of euros in dubious transactions processed by the French online payments giant Worldline, a group run by the cream of France's elite. The probe shows how for ten years, and with complete impunity, the group handled these fraudulent or unethical payments on behalf of the worst figures in e-commerce: online swindlers, illegal casinos, shady pornography groups and prostitution websites. Following the initial publication of the revelations by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network, prosecutors in Belgium announced they were launching an investigation into alleged “money laundering” in relation to Worldline's Belgian operation. In a statement, Worldline said it would cooperate with the authorities in Brussels. Yann Philippin and Clément Rabu report.
In June 2024 President Emmanuel Macron caught many by surprise when he dissolved the National Assembly and called snap parliamentary elections. His aim was to strengthen his hand in the Assembly where his party and its allies lacked an absolute majority. However, the ploy backfired and the outcome of the new elections left the Assembly more politically divided than before, with even less chance of being able to produce a stable government with a full legislative programme. So, deprived of influence over major legislation, MPs now paradoxically find themselves swamped with a flood of largely small-scale bills on diverse issues. Though amid the apparent chaos some new parliamentary habits are beginning to take root. Pauline Graulle reports.
Caroline Parmentier is a Member of Parliament for the far-right Rassemblement National and a key strategist for that party's former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. In particular, she has been one of the architects of Le Pen’s so-called “de-demonisation” strategy to soften the party's image and erase memories of its murky past. Yet an investigation by Mediapart has shown that over a period of 30 years Caroline Parmentier wrote racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments for a far-right publication. She also openly expressed her support for Marshal Philippe Pétain – who headed France's wartime Vichy government which collaborated with the Nazis - on Facebook as recently as 2018. Rassemblement National now faces growing embarrassment over these revelations about a woman who is a close friend of Marine Le Pen. Fabrice Arfi and Antton Rouget report.
In a series of confessions before US and German prosecutors, the transcripts of which have been obtained by Mediapart, former Libyan secret services agent Musbah Eter detailed how intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, and his bomb-maker “Masud”, planned and carried out a series of bombings in the 1980s, including that which downed a Pan Am Boeing 747 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Eter’s statements, given in a series of interrogations between 2013 and 2015, have never before been made public and remained unexploited by prosecution services. That may change ahead of a new trial over the Lockerbie bombing due in the US next April. Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille report.
The macabre and seemingly weekly occurrence of bodies washed ashore on France’s northern Channel coast bears witness to the recurrent tragedies that befall migrants attempting the dangerous clandestine passage to southern England in overcrowded, unseaworthy dinghies. When the small boats sink, the exact numbers of passengers who originally embarked on them is mostly unknown, as are the numbers who disappear in the incidents. Maïa Courtois, Maël Galisson and Simon Mauvieux report on the difficult and often mismanaged process of identifying the corpses of victims returned by the sea, and the angst of the families who remain uncertain of their fate.
In the spring of 2024 reports that Malian-born French singer Aya Nakamura would perform at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics later that summer attracted controversy and opposition. More than a year later, thirteen members of the extreme-right group Les Natifs are set to stand trial in a Paris court over a banner they wrote attacking her planned participation in that ceremony. Among those appearing in court on June 4th is a young woman who, at the time of the banner incident, was a parliamentary assistant to MPs from the far-right Rassemblement National party. Matthieu Suc reports.
The French intelligence services are on the alert for saboteurs in the pay of Russia operating across European countries, including France, and who are said to be planning to intervene during forthcoming elections on the continent. The security agencies fear that their methods will not involve simply disinformation but more direct action. The next Kremlin target could be the Polish presidential election later this month. According to intelligence reports, these potential saboteurs have been trained in the Balkans, in particular by a Bulgarian neo-Nazi who is wanted by French prosecutors in connection with the painting of red handprints on the Shoah Memorial in Paris in 2024. Matthieu Suc reports.
When Paris receives a request from a foreign country for the return of human remains held in France's public museum collections, such demands can be granted under recent legislation. But the French state argues that there is a legal vacuum when such claims instead come from French overseas territories such as French Guiana on the South American mainland and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, both of which are governed from Paris. Julien Sartre reports on attempts to change the law to allow remains held by metropolitan museums to be returned to these distant French territories.
For more than twenty years residents living near a steel plant operated by ArcelorMittal at Fos-sur-Mer on France's Mediterranean coast have been campaigning against the pollution it has been spewing out. According to Mediapart's information, and later confirmed by local prosecutors in nearby Marseille, the multinational steel giant ArcelorMittal – run by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal - has now been placed under formal investigation over the pollution. The criminal probe centres on claims that the steel plant has exposed residents to illegal emissions and put their lives in danger. The company says it denies the accusations. Pascale Pascariello reports.
While mention of the word torture was banned from official language at the time, the French military in Algeria encouraged the use of torture during the 1954-1962 war of independence, and with the consent of the government in Paris. Historian Fabrice Riceputi, an associate researcher with the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (IHTP), specialised in the events of the independence war, details here how, after the military experimented with torture and forced disappearances during the 1957 Battle of Algiers, French generals recommended a generalisation of the practice.
