Mediapart

Description

Landmark investigations

• The Bettencourt affair in 2010.
• The Sarkozy-Gaddafi case case in 2012. Mediapart made public two official Libyan documents suggesting the existence of a €50 million transfer from the Libyan regime to Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign.
• The Cahuzac affair in 2012. Mediapart made public an audio recording from 2000 compromising Jérôme Cahuzac, then France's Minister for the Budget, in a fiscal fraud case.
• Former National Front candidate Jean-Claude Veillard's role in the payment of taxes to ISIS middlemen by Lafarge in 2013–2014.
• The Benalla Affair. On 31 January 2019, Mediapart released voice recordings attributed to Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase which suggested serious offenses committed by the two. On 4 February 2019, the office of Mediapart was subjected to a raid which failed as Mediapart refused it on the ground that the warrant was not authorised by a judge. The raid was in connection with a new investigation concerning a breach of Benalla's and Crase's privacy, prompted by the office of the Prime Minister. Neither of the two have launched action against Mediapart for breach of privacy. Mediapart sees in the raid an attempt by the Government to reveal and intimidate the source of the voice recordings and to stifle journalistic rights to inform the public. Mediapart has never been subject to such a raid before, and received support from other press organisations and the European Federation of Journalists. The incident is reported by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
• In July 2019, Mediapart revealed that €63,000 of public money had been spent by François de Rugy on the refurbishment of his official residence, and published photographs of lobster and champagne dinners allegedly taken between October 2017 and June 2018, implying profligacy at the taxpayers' expense whilst he was President of the National Assembly. On 16 July 2019, Rugy resigned as Ecology Minister.