The leading French industrialist and media owner Serge Dassault has been secretly recorded on video admitting that he paid out a huge sum of money to help 'buy' a local election in a town where he was once mayor. Billionaire Dassault, one of the wealthiest men in France and a French senator, makes the assertion in a recording obtained by Mediapart and parts of which are published here. 'I gave the money,' he is heard saying to two men who asked him about the cash – 1.7 million euros in all - while they clandestinely recorded him. Mediapart has also established that three months after the video was made the two men concerned were shot and wounded, one of them seriously. Contacted by Mediapart about the tape Serge Dassault said he had no comment. Fabrice Arfi, Michaël Hajdenberg and Pascale Pascariello report.
Interpol has provided exceptional assistance, including confidential information, to a French lawyer hired since 2011 by its secretary general for his divorce proceedings, in order to help him win a lucrative contract with Libya as part of an Interpol-sponsored project to recover assets looted by the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Mediapart has gained access to correspondence demonstrating how Interpol’s Director of Legal Affairs used key contacts of the international police cooperation organisation to ensure that the authorities in Tripoli agree to hire the lawyer’s services. Mathilde Mathieu reports.
A worldwide treasure hunt is on to track down the massive, hidden fortune of late Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his clan, bringing together a disparate group of mercenaries, from weathered former US intelligence operatives to be-suited business lawyers. All are gambling on big commission returns for the financial hides they return to the new authorities in Tripoli. “When you have 100 million euros to recover, there’s already some nervousness,” commented a director of Interpol. “When you have 1 billion, people are ready to kill. Here, we’re dealing with dozens of billions.” Mathilde Mathieu reports.
When the head of the International Monetary Fund appeared before judges investigating the Tapie affair, she told them she had never read key memos from a state body that was advising her against the controversial arbitration that eventually paid out 404 million euros of taxpayers' money. But that is not what she told French MPs five years ago. Mediapart's Laurent Mauduit reports on how the former finance minister appears to have misled the criminal investigation.
Mohammed Ismail (pictured), a former aide to Saïf al-Islam, the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, has confirmed claims that Gaddafi funded the 2007 election campaign of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, Mediapart can reveal. “Part of the funds went through North Africa Commercial Bank in Beirut, and from there to a bank account in Germany affiliated with Ziad,” Ismail told Mediapart, referring to Ziad Takieddine, a Paris-based businessman and arms dealer who worked as a key advisor to Sarkozy’s aides in their dealings with the former Libyan regime. “Other parts were funnelled through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland,” he added. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
A senior aide to the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi has revealed that Gaddafi personally told him that his regime illegally funded Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign to the tune of 20 million dollars. Moftah Missouri, who was Colonel Gaddafi’s personal interpreter, who was given the rank of ambassador and who also served as a minister in the regime, made the disclosure in an interview with French state television channel France 2, to be broadcast Thursday evening. During the interview, also confirms the veracity of a document published by Mediapart in April 2012 in which Gaddafi's funding of Sarkozy’s campaign is detailed. Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske report.
The application of ethnic quotas among players in professional French football clubs is widespread and “to deny it would be absurd”, according to the chairman of France’s Union of Professional Football Clubs, Jean-Pierre Louvel (pictured), whose organisation represents 45 French clubs. His disclosures come two years after Mediapart revealed a scheme by leaders of the French Football Federation (FFF) to introduce ethnic quotas on teenagers joining French national football training academies. Louvel told Mediapart that when a club had a majority of players of African origin “the social life of the club is no longer the same” and referred to problems caused by “the human relations of Africans”. Questioned by Mediapart, FFF chairman Noël Le Graët said he “couldn’t give a damn” about Louvel’s comments. French sports minister Valérie Fourneyron on Tuesday ordered the FFF to take an official position on Louvel’s remarks. Fabrice Arfi and Michaël Hajdenberg report.
UBS and its subsidiary UBS France were earlier this year placed under formal investigation for conspiracy in illegal sales of banking services in a wide-ranging judicial probe into evidence suggesting the bank enabled wealthy French nationals to evade tax on assets deposited in undeclared Swiss accounts. Mediapart has gained exclusive access to documents that illustrate how UBS enticed wealthy French footballers to place their assets with the bank, and which raise further questions over its suspected complicity in tax fraud. Mathilde Mathieu, Michaël Hajdenberg and Dan Israel report.
Disgraced former French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac (pictured), who in April confessed to holding a secret foreign bank account while leading a crackdown on tax dodgers, sat on evidence implicating the HSBC bank’s French unit in organizing tax evasion which was handed to him when he was president of the parliamentary finance commission, Mediapart can reveal. The bank is now at the centre of a French judicial investigation, launched in April, into suspected “laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud” and the “illegal prospection” of clients. Cahuzac, who as president of the parliamentary finance commission had the power to launch an independent investigation into the bank’s activities in France, received the information in August 2010, when his brother, Antoine Cahuzac, was a senior director of HSBC’s French arm. Fabrice Arfi and Valentine Oberti report.
Their role is in theory simply to hand out parking tickets. But in one French town traffic wardens have taken on a controversial role as members of a mobile security unit who evict squatters, police demonstrations and search members of the public, while some have been seen carrying tear gas sprays. Now, after a string of violent incidents involving the supposed parking enforcement officials, the ministry of the interior has been urged to disband what some claim has become little more than the local mayor's private political police force. Louise Fessard reports.
