Was Société Générale's determination to hold on to a 2.2-billion-euro tax rebate partly behind the French bank's motivation to pursue its “rogue trader” Jérôme Kerviel with such zeal? That is a question raised by a report written for French prosecutors in May 2008 and now seen by Mediapart and other French media as part of a joint investigation. As Martine Orange reports, it appears this important report was first ignored by the judicial authorities and then shredded.
The French government’s labour law reform bill, now being debated in the Senate, has prompted fierce opposition from several trades unions, massive demonstrations across the country, and a deep political and social crisis. Opinion polls show a majority of the population are opposed to the bill, which reduces current protection for employees with measures that include easing conditions for firing staff and placing a ceiling on compensation sums awarded by industrial tribunals. But the government is adamant it will not negotiate the bill's contents. Martine Orange investigates the reasons for its unusual intransigence, and discovers evidence that the most controversial texts of the bill were demanded by European Union economic liberals.
French businessman Arnaud Mimran, who stood trial in Paris last month for his alleged key role in a massive carbon trading fraud, and who is also placed under investigation in a separate case of kidnapping, set up a company in Israel with French MP Meyer Habib, a close acquaintance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following denials and later admissions from Netanyahu over receiving funding from Mimran, the latter’s relationship with the Israeli PM’s entourage is further revealed by the company, which was created by, and domiciled at, the legal practice of Netanyahu’s lawyer. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Mediapart and French radio station France Inter have received five new accounts of lewd behaviour, including sexual assault and harassment, allegedly perpetrated by French MP Denis Baupin, husband of French housing minister Emmanuelle Cosse. Baupin was forced to stand down as speaker of the French parliament earlier this month after Mediapart published interviews with eight women, including an MP and Green party spokeswomen, who said they had suffered assault and harassment by him. The new accounts given here cover a 16-year period during which Baupin was deputy-mayor of Paris and a leading official with the French green party. Lénaïg Bredoux reports.
The Catholic Church in France has developed a system of quietly moving priests suspected of sex abuse to other areas or jobs, Mediapart can reveal. The method, aimed at avoiding or damping down local scandals without telling the judicial authorities, includes sending the priests concerned on sabbatical leave, to remote rural parishes, to jobs as archivists or as chaplains for the elderly, or in some cases despatching them to far-flung parishes in Africa and Asia. Daphné Gastaldi, Mathieu Martiniere and Mathieu Périsse report.
On January 17th, 2016, a volunteer died after taking part in a drugs trial in the west of France, while four others suffered suspected brain damage. The company who conducted the trial and supervisory authorities have insisted that the tragedy was “unprecedented” and could not have been foreseen. However, new evidence has emerged that a volunteer in a earlier trial with the same drug suffered side effects and that a later MRI scan shows he suffered a stroke. Yet this information appears to have been concealed by the medical and health authorities. Mediapart's science correspondent Michel de Pracontal reports.
French economy minister Emmanuel Macron is to announce he will make a bid as an independent candidate for the French presidency in elections due in 2017, Mediapart has been told by well-informed sources. Macron, 38, who launched his own political movement last month, is reported to be actively seeking funds for his campaign. The move, which Mediapart understands may be announced in early June, could well be the final blow for President François Hollande’s own ambitions for a second term in office and has heightened tensions between Macron and Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Laurent Mauduit reports.
French Member of Parliament Denis Baupin on Monday resigned from his role as deputy speaker of the lower house, the National Assembly, just hours after the publication of an investigation by Mediapart and France Inter radio in which several female colleagues, including a fellow MP, allege they were sexually harassed by him. Baupin, 53, who is married to housing minister Emmanuelle Coste, last month resigned from the EELV Green party to which all of his accusers belonged at the time of the alleged events. He denies the accusations, which include physical groping and other lewd behaviour and repeatedly sending sexually explicit phone text messages. Lénaïg Bredoux reports.
Over recent months, the French Catholic Church has become engulfed by revelations of paedophile activity by priests who allegedly benefited from protection from their hierarchy. Wide exposure of the cases, some dating back to the 1990s, has led to more witnesses coming forward to complain of sexual abuse by members of the Church. Among the latest cases to resurface now is that of a Paris priest who allegedly engaged for years in the sexual abuse of patients he received as a psychoanalyst. Mediapart can reveal that Tony Anatrella, an advisor to two Vatican councils and who teaches at a prestigious ecclesiastic college in Paris, has never been investigated by the Church despite numerous complaints made against him since 2001. Daphné Gastaldi, Mathieu Martiniere and Mathieu Périsse report.
Every few years France gets swept up in a controversy over Tariq Ramadan. And since 1995 much of the French establishment has vilified and shunned this Muslim preacher, writer and academic, whom they suspect of advocating radical Islamism and sectarian views. Now the Swiss-born intellectual with Egyptian roots is seeking French nationality in a move that is likely to provoke yet another row. Mathieu Magnaudeix profiles a controversial figure who is almost impossible to classify.
