The mayors of several towns in the southern suburbs of Paris at the centre of a suspected corruption scam involving allegations of the fixing of public procurement contracts, bribes and influence peddling have still not been questioned by police who opened an official investigation into the graft claims more than five years ago. The allegations, including threats of violence, mystery gifts of luxury vehicles, holidays between mayors and those they award contracts to, paint a disturbing picture of connivance and graft, and raise serious questions about why the official investigation has stalled. Karl Laske reports.
French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac is being investigated by the tax authorities over suspected irregularities in his tax statements, notably undeclared and under-declared assets, Mediapart can reveal with the publication here of a confidential document listing their queries. The tax inspectors’ enquiry is being led in parallel to a separate preliminary judicial investigation, launched last month, into Cahuzac's suspected 'laundering of the proceeds of tax fraud' relating to evidence that he held a secret Swiss bank account before entering government. Fabrice Arfi reports.
Nicolas Sarkozy is secretly attempting to set up a 1 billion-euro private equity fund, with plans for it to be based in London, and has begun prospecting wealthy individuals and institutions to back the scheme, financial and business sources have told Mediapart. According to concordant sources, the former French President (pictured) has made discreet contact with potential backers based in France, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Laurent Mauduit reports.
Xavier Niel earned significant amounts of cash in his early business career through investing in sex shops. But the billionaire’s real money was made in the telecommunications industry through his development and ownership of internet service provider Free. Here, in the second part of Mediapart's investigation into the influential businessman, Laurent Mauduit examines the crucial day on which Niel consolidated his control over the company that was to make his name and his fortune.
He is one of the most powerful and influential men in France today. Not only is Xavier Niel the founder and main shareholder of the country's second biggest internet service provider, Free, the billionaire businessman is also part-owner of the nation's best-known newspaper Le Monde. Such is his power – and personality – that he is not afraid to take on Google, while he is friends with some of the most prominent families who make up France's wealthy business elite. Yet in the late 1980s Niel was a 'brilliant but penniless' youth with no formal qualifications working as a technician in the twilight world of sex chatlines and dating in central Paris. In an investigation Mediapart charts Niel's career from his lucrative ownership of sex shops in Paris and Strasbourg to the day he seized total control of the company that would ultimately make him France’s 12th wealthiest man. Laurent Mauduit and Dan Israel report.
The Ecole Bilingue Active Jeannine-Manuel is a semi-private Paris school specialised in teaching in both French and English, where its 2,200 pupils are offered a complete lower education cycle from age 3 to 18. It has become the school of choice for parents among the capital’s political, business and showbiz elite, as well as others from the expat community, and boasts exceptional educational standards and means that provide a 100% pass rate for the school-leaving Baccalauréat exam. But, as Lucie Delaporte reports, a significant part of the funding of this high-performing school for the offspring of the rich and famous is met through a generous system of tax breaks.
Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister accused of having an undisclosed Swiss bank account until 2010, has withheld the truth surrounding the affair from the highest offices of state, Mediapart can reveal. Mediapart can disclose that the person who possesses the key recording on which Cahuzac (pictured) is heard discussing his bank account has himself approached the office of French President François Hollande to confirm it is genuine. Meanwhile email correspondence between the minister and friends shows that he himself does not deny the authenticity of the recording. And Mediapart can also reveal that the tax authorities have started to carry out thorough checks of the budget minister’s recent tax declarations, which appear to show numerous discrepancies. All of which, says Fabrice Arfi, is proof that Jérôme Cahuzac is in an untenable political situation.
The plan to build the so-called Great West Airport in the unique hedgerow farmland of France’s lower Loire Valley has provoked one of the biggest environmental protests seen in the country for years. The row also has a strong political dimension with Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault being a big supporter of the plan ever since he was mayor of Nantes, while the government's Green allies are deeply opposed. But there is also another, less visible, aspect to the project - the favourable contract won by giant French construction group Vinci to build and run the airport. Jade Lindgaard reports.
Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister accused of having a secret Swiss bank account until 2010, has amassed considerable wealth from his work as a hair transplant surgeon and consultant. Mediapart can reveal the name of the man who handles the minister's personal wealth, the ultra-discreet Hervé Dreyfus (see photo, right). Mediapart can also disclose it was Dreyfus to whom Cahuzac was talking during his now infamous telephone conversation when he was accidentally recorded talking about the Swiss account – whose existence he still continues to deny. Fabrice Arfi, Dan Israel, Mathilde Mathieu and Martine Orange investigate the financial background and contacts of France's under-fire budget minister.
Following French budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac’s vehement denials of Mediapart’s revelations that he held a secret bank account in Switzerland over a number of years until 2010, Mediapart publishes here a sound recording of a conversation in which Cahuzac (pictured) explicitly refers to the account, held with a branch of Swiss banking giant UBS in Geneva. Cahuzac, who last month announced a crackdown by his ministry on tax fraud, can be heard saying: “What bothers me is that I still have an account open with UBS", before adding, with irony: "UBS is not necessarily the most hidden of banks.” Fabrice Arfi reports.
