French criminal investigators have established a financial link between the recent carbon trading fraud – the biggest crime of its kind France has ever seen – and Latin American cocaine cartels. In particular the money trail points to a connection between the massive fraud and the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, whose boss is the drugs baron Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Gabonese president Ali Bongo is seeking a second term of office in elections due in August in the former French colony, where the economy is bled by rampant corruption, a legacy of his father Omar, for decades a key French ally in Africa. But the legitimacy of Ali Bongo’s rise to power in 2009, and his bid for reelection, is thrown into doubt over suspicion that his birth certificate is a fake, and that he is in fact an adopted Nigerian, for the constitution of Gabon prohibits naturalized citizens from running for the presidency. Mediapart has gained access to a document showing the French presidency has stepped into the controversy to announce the certificate is “authentic”, despite growing evidence to the contrary. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Donald Trump’s election campaign manager Paul Manafort is suspected by a French judicial investigation of having signed a fake contract with Paris-based arms dealer Ziad Takieddine to help the latter hide the real origin of cash seized by customs officers which he had smuggled into France from Switzerland. The incident occurred at the height of what has become known as the “Karachi Affair”, involving suspected illegal funding of former French prime minister Édouard Balladur’s 1995 presidential election campaign. Manafort is also suspected by the investigation of having invoiced the Balladur camp for unnecessary opinion polls during the campaign. Karl Laske and Fabrice Arfi report.
Serge Dassault, the head of the aviation and defence group that bears his name, a right-wing senator and France's sixth richest person, is accused of laundering the proceeds of tax fraud and of hiding part of his wealth from Parliamentary authorities. The trial, which started on Monday July 4th, focuses on cash hidden in offshore accounts which was allegedly later used to buy votes in the town near Paris where Dassault was mayor. As Yann Philippin reports, the origins of some of these accounts goes back to the days of Serge Dassault's father Marcel, who founded the aviation group.
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.
