In April 2012, Mediapart published an official Libyan document that revealed that the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi approved payment of 50 million euros to fund Nicolas Sarkozy's successful 2007 presidential election campaign. The publication of the document prompted the opening of a judicial investigation into the claims that Gaddafi illegally financed Sarkozy’s campaign, and the ongoing probe represents a major threat to the former president who this month announced his return to active politics. “About Libya, the judges know that the documents are false,” said Sarkozy in an interview published last weekend. But in fact, as Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report, the magistrates leading the investigation have collected statements from numerous experts whose testimony gives credence to the document published by Mediapart.
The former first secretary of the Socialist Party and one-time presidential hopeful Martine Aubry has recently made a return to national politics in France. In a series of media interventions the mayor of the northern city of Lille has made clear her dismay at the direction taken by François Hollande's socialist government. But Aubry's return to frontline politics could yet be overshadowed by a judicial investigation into how a false document was used to justify the award of a multi-million euro contract to build a major sports stadium in Lille that will feature in the Euro 2016 football tournament. Though the investigation was recently and unexpectedly closed, Mediapart can now reveal the existence of an embarrassing letter written by Martine Aubry that shows she passed on the fraudulent document to councillors. Geoffrey Livolsi reports.
A six-year investigation into the alleged terrorist activities of ten people suspected of having mounted an anarchist campaign of sabotage against the French railway system is to reach a conclusion later this summer when public prosecutors will advise whether they should stand trial. What is known as ‘the Tarnac affair’ began in the autumn of 2008 with triumphant claims by the French authorities that a dangerous anarchist cell with links to international terrorism had been successfully dismantled thanks to the efficiency of its intelligence services. But the case against the group of young anti-capitalists living as an alternative community in rural central France has since become a long-running judicial fiasco, discredited by tampered and incoherent evidence. Their fate now appears to hinge on a controversial police surveillance report, which their lawyers argue was, at least in part, fabricated. Louise Fessard reports.
French MPs have recently been obliged to make public not just their financial interests but also who they hire to work for them. According to these official declarations and Mediapart's own research at least a fifth of all elected members of the National Assembly have employed a family member in 2014. Of these, 52 were spouses, 32 were daughters and 28 were sons. Mathilde Mathieu reports on the domestic world of French parliamentarians.
Faouzi Lamdaoui, one of François Hollande's advisors at the Elysée and a close ally of the president for many years, has been questioned by detectives investigating allegations of “misuse of company assets” and “tax fraud”. Lamdaoui, who advises the French head of state on diversity and equality issues, has denied any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, an investigation by Mediapart has shown that the advisor has been the shareholder, manager or director in a range of similar companies, two of which have been the target of legal proceedings. Lénaïg Bredoux and Emmanuel Morisse report.
The head of the parliamentary group of France’s main opposition party, the conservative UMP, faces a stormy meeting with his MP colleagues on Tuesday after Mediapart’s revelations that, without informing them, he secretly lent their cash-strapped party 3 million euros from what are largely public funds destined for financing the group’s parliamentary activities. The scandal has outraged many within the UMP, and follows Mediapart’s earlier revelations that the party used faked invoices to hide 17 million euros of illegal overspending on the 2012 presidential election campaign of its candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy. Fabrice Arfi, Mathilde Mathieu and Ellen Salvi report.
Mediapart has obtained documents and witness accounts that provide evidence of money laundering by the Banque Pasche de Monaco while it was a subsidiary of French banking giant Crédit Mutuel-CIC. Among the affluent clients of the small bank, based in the Principality of Monaco, is Ricardo Teixeira, a former member of the executive committee of the international football governing body FIFA and who headed Brazil’s World Cup organization committee, implicated in a series of fraud and corruption cases and who deposited more than 30 million euros on his account. A judicial investigation is now underway into the bank’s dubious practices, which were revealed to the Crédit Mutuel-CIC group’s senior management by three whistleblowing staff - who were subsequently sacked, just months before the Monaco bank was sold off last November. Geoffrey Livolsi, Dan Israel and Fabrice Arfi report.
Mediapart can disclose the content of more phone taps concerning former president Nicolas Sarkozy that show how he and his entourage have sought to glean information on the state of judicial probes from senior state officials. One conversation reveals that the ex-head of state was worried about the “loyalty” of the new head of France's domestic intelligence service, from whom he was trying to extract key details. Judges investigating the Libyan funding of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign also believe they may have uncovered the identity of one of the former president's “moles” in the intelligence services. As Fabrice Arfi reports, the revelations provide further evidence about how far Nicolas Sarkozy and his aides seem willing to go in order to find out how judicial investigations are progressing.
French IT firm Qosmos, specialised in mass-surveillance technology and which works on projects for France's intelligence services, is the subject of a judicial investigation launched in April into ‘complicity in acts of torture’. The probe centres on the Paris-based company’s involvement in a contract, led by an Italian company, to supply the Bashar al-Assad regime in war-torn Syria with a system to intercept, open and archive almost all email and other internet traffic flowing through the country. Qosmos says it eventually withdrew from the project for ethical reasons, when the key technology it provided for the project was not yet operational. But, as detailed in this joint report by Mediapart and Reflets.info, the history of the case raises more questions than it provides answers.
President François Hollande's special advisor Aquilino Morelle dramatically quit his job on Friday after Mediapart published revelations about his conflict of interest while working as a government inspector. Morelle, a friend of current French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, carried out private consultancy work for a pharmaceutical company while working for France's public service inspectorate, the Inspection générale des affaires sociales (IGAS). Though Morelle insisted the work had been correctly declared at the time, both his former boss and IGAS itself say he was never given authorisation. The departure of a key figure from the presidential Elysée Palace over claims of an undeclared conflict of interest will be a major embarrassment for President Hollande who, during his 2012 election campaign, promised an “exemplary Republic” under his leadership. Michaël Hajdenberg reports.
