The former Renault chairman and CEO, Carlos Ghosn, has travelled to Lebanon having fled from Japan where he was on bail facing charges of alleged financial wrongdoing. Ghosn, who was also chairman of Renault's Japanese partner Nissan, and who has always claimed his innocence, immediately justified the extraordinary move by saying he no longer wanted to be “held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed”. From the start of the affair Ghosn has claimed he is the victim of a plot, while largely avoiding details of the allegations against him. Mediapart's Matthieu Suc, author of a recent book on Renault, reports.
Giant French banking group Société Générale has admitted corrupting Libyan officials under the regime of late dictator Muammar Gaddafi to gain contracts worth more than 2 billion dollars. The scam involved paying vast secret commissions to a businessman intermediary via his offshore company based in Panama. In a 2017 statement recognising its role, the bank said that it “wishes to place on record its regret about the lack of caution of some of its employees”, but documents now obtained by Mediapart suggest the operation may have been validated at the highest level of the group’s management. Fabrice Arfi reports.
The French Mediterranean island of Corsica is the focus of a series of investigations into the suspected mass fraud of European Union agricultural subsidies. One of the alleged methods of the fraud is the fictitious declaration of swathes of scrubland as pasture land for cattle farmers. The sums involved are vast, and those suspected of the scam include some closely related to the island’s notorious and feared underworld gangs. Hélène Constanty reports.
In the last ten years at least seven people have killed themselves by jumping from the terraces or plaza of a site at France's national library, the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand in Paris. Meanwhile on December 8th this year a girl fell from the iconic building and is now in a critical condition. Trade unions representing staff at the library say that not enough work has been done to make the site safe. Meanwhile management suggests such measures might be “ineffective” and say they also have to consider keeping the building's “architectural integrity”. Mathilde Goanec reports.
A senior judge at Versailles, west of Paris, has been accused of harassing clerks of the court and mocking both defendants and victims in her court, Mediapart has learnt. However, despite a lengthy letter of complaint from the clerks' trade union, the judge's bosses have just given her a warning about her future conduct. Mediapart's legal affairs correspondent Michel Deléan reports.
In June 2019 Michel Platini, the former head of European football's governing body UEFA, was interviewed by police as a witness over the circumstances of the award of the 2022 football World Cup to Qatar. Two former colleagues of Nicolas Sarkozy were also questioned about a lunch hosted for Qatar's crown prince by the French president in 2010, attended by Platini, just days before the controversial vote to give the tournament to the oil and gas-rich state. Now the French financial crimes prosecution unit has launched a judicial investigation into the affair over alleged “corruption”, Mediapart has learnt. Former French football star Platini has strongly denied any wrongdoing. Yann Philippin and Antton Rouget report.
An investigation by Mediapart has confirmed that a longstanding close aide to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy received 440,000 euros in a secret offshore account paid from Libyan funds one year before the 2007 French presidential elections, casting further suspicion that Sarkozy’s successful bid was partly financed by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The money was transferred by a shell company belonging to a French-Lebanese intermediary who is central to the funding allegations, through which transited several millions of euros from the Tripoli regime. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
In a recording obtained by Mediapart, an advisor to Chelsea star N'Golo Kanté admits putting pressure on the World Cup-winning French international footballer in 2017 over a dispute involving the sharing out of commissions linked to the player's move from Leicester City to the London club. The advisor says that his brother, who was also present, “perhaps” had a “gun” on him at the time of the discussion, in which deaths threats were allegedly made in relation to Kanté's agent. Yann Philippin and Matthieu Suc investigate a popular French player who has been the subject of a merciless fight between members of his entourage, a battle involving huge sums of money and offshore companies in Jersey.
Earlier this year Mediapart reported how a 19-year-old woman had her skull fractured by police in Marseille, southern France, as she lay on the ground during a day of demonstrations. The same investigation has now revealed the existence of a new hybrid police unit that was created to take on the so-called 'gilets jaunes' or 'yellow vest' protestors in France. These officers were not trained in public order policing yet the initiative was backed by a memo from the Ministry of the Interior and superior officers who considered that in a time of “war” anything and everything is permissible. Pascale Pascariello reports.
Award-winning French actress Adèle Haenel has accused the prominent French filmmaker Christophe Ruggia of inappropriate “touching” and of “sexually harassing” her when she was aged between 12 and 15. Haenel, now aged 30, whose story is supported by numerous documents and witness accounts, describes the director's behaviour as “paedophilia”. In this lengthy investigation, Mediapart reveals the long journey the actress has undergone, from the period when it was “impossible” to speak out to the point when continuing to stay silent had become “unbearable”. In a written statement, Christophe Ruggia has “categorically” denied the claims. Marine Turchi reports.
