French nuclear safety inspectors have discovered numerous faults with crucial safety valves in the cooling system of what will be one of the world’s biggest nuclear power plants under construction at Flamanville, on the Channel coast, Mediapart can reveal. The malfunctioning valves for the Areva-designed, third-generation European Pressurized Reactor could cause its meltdown, in a similar scenario to the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the US. The inspectors’ damning confidential report, obtained by Mediapart, follows the revelation last month that the Flamanville EPR reactor’s vessel contained excessive amounts of carbon that could cause it to crack. Pascale Pascariello reports.
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius is the country’s longest-serving socialist politician in government, having previously headed four ministries and becoming, in 1984, France’s youngest ever prime minister at the age of 37. Elected president of the National Assembly, the lower house, on two occasions, he has served as head of the Socialist Party and remains one of its leading officials in a career that spans 40 years. During that period, he has built up a powerful political base in the Seine-Maritime département (county) in northern France, where he has also held numerous local posts, as a Member of Parliament, mayor and councillor. In the run-up to this weekend’s Socialist Party congress in Poitiers, Stéphane Alliès and Mathilde Mathieu have investigated the workings of Fabius’s fiefdom, interviewing local party officials past and present, and uncovered disturbing evidence of a lucrative ‘jobs for the boys’ system of rewards for loyalty. Here they report on how Didier Marie, one of the foreign minister’s faithful local circle of allies, was able to earn 12,000 euros per month over several years from a catalogue of jobs that would, to all appearances, test even the most ardent workaholic.
A system of hidden commissions on investment funds operated by Natixis Asset Management and sold to small investors in France via the company’s parent bank BPCE is estimated to have creamed off about 100 million euros from unwitting customers. Amid an investigation into the affair by the French financial markets regulator, Mediapart publishes here a hitherto confidential list of the 75 funds involved. Laurent Mauduit reports.
The conversations of two African heads of state have been eavesdropped by French police during a major investigation into alleged corruption by a French businessman. The transcripts of the phone-tapped conversations involving Mali's president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, known as IBK, and Gabon's Ali Bongo reveal a vast system of gifts and favours apparently provided by controversial Corsican businessman Michel Tomi, who has been dubbed the “godfather to the godfathers”. As far as the judges investigating the case are concerned, the phone taps reveal corruption. And for French president François Hollande the content of the transcripts involving IBK will come as a devastating and embarrassing diplomatic blow. For much of Hollande's African policy has been based on the symbolic success of his old socialist friend IBK, who was voted in as president of Mali just months after Paris sent in troops to end an Islamic insurgency there. IBK's election was supposed to usher in a fresh start for Mali and a new era of French diplomacy in Africa. That narrative now looks to be in ruins. Fabrice Arfi, Ellen Salvi, Lénaïg Bredoux and Thomas Cantaloube report.
Jany Le Pen, wife of the founder of France's far-right Front National party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has held a secret bank account in Switzerland, according to information obtained by Mediapart. That brings to three the number of hidden Swiss accounts associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen, and France's special prosecutor for financial fraud is now understood to be investigating the former FN president's financial affairs in Switzerland. The affair also throws the spotlight on socialite Jany Le Pen, Jean-Marie's second wife, to whom he has been married for 24 years. Though she usually steers clear of party political issues, Jany Le Pen has on occasions acted as the FN founder's de facto emissary. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi look at the new allegations and examine the profile of a woman who has shared Jean-Marie Le Pen's life for more than a quarter of a century.
In January 2008, French bank Société Générale announced it had lost 4.9 billion euros through the reckless actions of one of its traders, Jérôme Kerviel, claiming it had been unaware of his actions. Kerviel, who maintained from the start that his hierarchy knew what he was doing, received a jail sentence for forgery, fraud and hacking, and was ordered to pay the bank, in damages, the huge sum it lost. But last month, Mediapart can reveal, the former head of the French police’s financial crime squad, who led its investigation of the events and who was once convinced of the bank’s claims that Kerviel acted on his own, has given a statement to a French judge in which she details why she later became convinced, during her second investigation into the affair in 2012, the trader's bosses knew of his actions. Commander Nathalie Le Roy said she now feels she had been “used” by the bank in the 2008 investigation, how it later held back key evidence she requested, of witness accounts that Kerviel’s superiors were already made aware in 2007 of his extravagant trades, of allegations that Société Générale staff were made to sign gagging agreements and revealed that its claimed losses have never been independently verified. Martine Orange reports on a dramatic turnaround in the affair which appears bound to reopen the case.
Evidence sought by Paris-based judges leading a highly sensitive judicial investigation into the murders of 11 French naval engineers in Pakistan in 2002, which has exposed a major political corruption scandal in France, has for years been held back by France’s laws protecting defence and security secrecy. The persistent refusal to hand over intelligence documents and the silence of several key witnesses has heightened speculation of an orchestrated cover up to protect political and diplomatic interests. But, Mediapart has learnt, judges Marc Trévedic and Laurence Le Vert have now found a legal loophole with which to overcome the blanket protection of a law too often used to blunt investigations. The breakthrough may at last reveal the truth hidden behind 'The Karachi Affair', a dark and complex case that has rocked France’s political establishment. Fabrice Arfi reports.
The honorary president of the far-right Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was the economic beneficiary of a undisclosed trust in Switzerland which was overseen by his butler and which contained 2.2 million euros in its bank account, according to information received by Mediapart. Gold ingots and coins made up 1.7 million euros of the sum involved. The revelation of the undeclared account, which was at the HSBC bank and then moved to the Compagnie bancaire helvétique (CBH), is set to provide fresh embarrassment for the Front National which is already the subject of a a judicial probe over campaign funding, and which has been hit by a damaging public split between Jean-Marie Le Pen, its former president, and his daughter Marine Le Pen, its current president. Jean-Marie Le Pen could now face investigation for tax fraud or for making false declarations to public authorities. Karl Laske and Marine Turchi report.
The Franco-Canadian group Orpea, which runs private retirement homes and health clinics, has been using “observers” to spy on its workforce and in particular trade union activities, according to documents seen by Mediapart. When the French trade union in question, the CGT, decided to make a formal legal complaint, the group offered it a deal worth four million euros in return for withdrawing the complaint and keeping quiet about the snooping – a deal the union ultimately refused. Mediapart can also reveal that the three “spies” used by the healthcare firm came from a company which is linked to allegations that furniture retailer Ikea spied on its staff and customers in France. Mathilde Goanec and Mathilde Mathieu report.
Mediapart has gained access to confidential documents, backed by witness accounts, which tell a dark and disturbing story of how Danish pharmaceuticals firm Lundbeck succeeded in making a blockbuster in France of an antidepressant drug that experts judged had little, if any, medical interest. They reveal staggering examples of conflicts of interest, of secret links between the drugs firm and official health watchdogs, and of hidden price-fixing agreements. The result of the shady lobbying was a money-spinner which cost the deeply-indebted French public social security system hundreds of millions of euros. Michaël Hajdenberg and Pascale Pascariello report.
