France’s far-right Front National party is attempting to find funding from abroad for the 2017 presidential election campaign of its leader Marine Le Pen, who has been unable to convince French banks to provide the sizeable loans the party needs. Among potential foreign backers the party has already had contacts with is the United Arab Emirates which, according to one of Le Pen’s close entourage, financed an official visit she made to Egypt in 2015. Marine Turchi reports.
When the European Union finalises legislation adopted by its executive body, the European Commission, the definitive texts of the directives are thrashed out in secret, closed-door meetings known as “trialogues”, unknown to the general public, where no minutes are kept. The trialogues – sometimes called trilogues – bring together, and without democratic control, representatives from the EU’s three major institutions: the Commission, the European Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. Mediapart's Brussels correspondent Ludovic Lamant reports.
Officially Shukri Ghanem died after suffering a heart attack and falling into the River Danube where he drowned. But few people have ever believed this official version of the former Libyan oil minister's death in Vienna in April 2012. Hillary Clinton's leaked emails show that her entourage and American diplomats considered at the time that Ghanem's death was “highly suspicious”. Mediapart has also contacted an acquaintance of the former oil minister in Vienna who has raised several potential theories behind the Libyan's death, including one involving “bribes” to politicians in France, Italy – and Britain. Agathe Duparc reports from Geneva.
Last Sunday Paris banned cars from many of its roads and on Monday the city's councillors voted to pedestrianise a busy route along the River Seine. Both measures are aimed at tackling the problem of air pollution that is affecting Paris as well as other large French cities. It is estimated that such pollution kills up to 2,500 people a year in the French capital, some 60 times more people than perish in road accidents on the city's streets. Mediapart's environment correspondent Jade Lindgaard reports.
A handwritten notebook kept by a senior Libyan figure details three payments made by Gaddafi's regime to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 presidential election campaign, Mediapart can reveal. Shukri Ghanem, who was then Libya's oil minister, took notes on the three payments made in 2007, which came to a total of 6.5 million euros. Ghanem later fled the North Africa country and was found dead in Austria in 2012. The discovery of his personal notebook and its entries from 2007 undermine claims by Sarkozy's camp that allegations of illegal Libyan funding are based on forged documents written after Gaddafi's fall from power. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
A confidential report submitted to President François Hollande two years ago and never made public, authored by the heads of France’s Court of Audit and State Council, estimates the total annual cost of specific perks paid to the country’s three surviving former presidents, plus the provision of personal security protection, at 10.3 million euros, Mediapart can reveal. The 26-page document, published here, recommends that the lavish privileges accorded to them be reduced for reasons of “modernization, transparency and control of public spending”. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
A French judicial investigation has described the “active role” played by Arnaud Claude, the partner of Nicolas Sarkozy in a Paris legal firm, Claude & Sarkozy, in helping an MP and longstanding political ally of the former French president, Patrick Balkany, to conceal from the French tax authorities his ownership of a luxurious Moroccan villa estimated to be worth more than 5 million euros. As the investigation draws to a close, the magistrates in charge have ordered the confiscation of a Normandy property belonging to the lawyer, Mediapart has learned. Fabrice Arfi and Mathilde Mathieu report.
The Hersant newspaper group disintegrated a few years ago, following massive job losses, the closure of titles and insolvencies. However the demise of this once-powerful group which had owned close to 50% of the national and local French press, is still having an impact in French overseas territories where it also had a strong base. Julien Sartre reports on the lingering effects of the fall of a newspaper empire which had influence around the globe.
Many experts in Africa want to see an end of the 'CFA franc', the currency backed by the French Treasury which was created 70 years ago and still used by 14 former colonies on the continent. But as Fanny Pigeaud reports in this second and concluding article on Africa's 'Franc Zone', the French authorities take a dim view of any criticism of the currency.
France's African colonies were finally given independence around 70 years ago but one throwback to that era still remains – control by Paris of its former colonies' currency. The 'CFA franc', guaranteed by the French Treasury, is the legal tender in 14 west and central African nations. As Fanny Pigeaud reports in the first of two articles, many African economists are critical of the 'Franc Zone', which many feel holds back economic development.
