A preliminary investigation was opened in Paris after the complaint against X filed by BFMTV for suspicions of interference in the work of Mr. M'Barki, since dismissed, learned Thursday AFP from sources close to the case.

The investigation was opened "recently", said one of these sources, and entrusted to the sub-directorate of economic and financial affairs of the Paris judicial police.

The national financial prosecutor's office (PNF), which did not wish to confirm the information, only told AFP that it had received "a divestment from the Paris prosecutor's office".

This investigation gives a judicial turn to a case that until then resembled the scenario of a spy movie.

Presenter of the BFMTV night news and "Bring in the accused" on RMC Story, Rachid M'Barki was dismissed in February for serious misconduct by the Altice group, to which these channels belong. A complaint against X for passive bribery and breach of trust was filed.

In question, suspicions of foreign interference in his work as presenter of the night news on BFMTV. This concerns a dozen short stories illustrated in images, relating in particular to Russian oligarchs, Qatar or Western Sahara.

The 54-year-old journalist was implicated in an international investigation by the collective of journalists Forbidden Stories, to which the investigative unit of Radio France and Le Monde contributed for the France.

Disinformation

Published in mid-February, this investigation pointed to the activities of an Israeli company, nicknamed "Team Jorge", specializing in disinformation for the benefit of various customers, including states.

Marc-Olivier Fogiel, October 6, 2021 in Paris © Thomas COEX / AFP/Archives

"I am accused of having failed my professional ethics by passing unverified information on air and suggesting that I would have been paid for it. All this is false and is pure slander," he said. M'Barki on Wednesday during his hearing by a parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign interference.

Deploring a "media lynching", however, he admitted to having aired images provided at his request by one of his "informants", a lobbyist named Jean-Pierre Duthion, whose name appears in the Forbidden Stories investigation.

Some of these images related to an economic forum between Morocco and Spain held in June in Western Sahara.

"They were neutral images," Mr. said. M'Barki, denying that he had ever been paid by Mr. Duthion.

The Moroccan-born journalist said he had "at no time the impression" that Duthion "could work for someone who was trying to manipulate information."

Heard Thursday by the same parliamentary commission of inquiry, the director general of BFMTV, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, however, said that this lobbyist had tried in vain to influence the work of another journalist of the channel, against payment.

"Mr. Duthion tried to contact other BFMTV journalists after the departure of Rachid M'Barki (...) to offer them other types of information, in quotation marks, that did not hold their interest," Fogiel revealed.

He says he was warned by these journalists and then passed on the information during the internal investigation.

"One (of the journalists) was offered a reward at that time," he added. "I'm not saying that Mr. M'Barki has been paid, I have no information, or even if it was proposed to him I do not know."

JPA-ALH-FBE-PR/MAY/MPM

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