Gaël Perdriau case: the mayor of Saint-Etienne prevents a publication by Mediapart

While the investigation site Mediapart was preparing to publish an investigation which revealed new revelations about the “political practices” of the mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau, the media was prohibited from publishing the article. Journalists denounce “prior censorship”. The article was ready to go online. But on Friday, the editorial staff of Mediapart saw a bailiff arrive, come to inform of the existence of a court decision, which prohibits the publication of this investigation. In case of non-compliance, Mediapart will have to pay 10,000 euros per extract published.

This follows a request filed by the lawyer for the mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau. Because this article contains revelations about the “political practices” of the mayor, also president of the metropolis of Saint-Étienne. Mediapart contacted him just before publication to get his side of the story. Gaël Perdriau asked for a delay to be able to respond to the investigation site. He ended up doing it. But three hours later, the bailiff arrived at the editorial office of Mediapart.

Laurent Wauquiez “victim of heinous practices on the part of Gaël Perdriau”

This article contains new revelations. Because at the end of August, the investigation site had already published articles on Gaël Perdriau. He revealed that the mayor’s entourage had allegedly blackmailed the sextape against his first deputy, Gilles Artigues. Since Monday, Mediapart publicly protests against this court decision.

Antton Rouget, journalist at Mediapart and author of the articles on Gaël Perdriau, returned to this decision at the microphone of Europe 1. “On the content, we cannot say much about this article, we are for the moment blocked by this court decision that “We are vigorously contesting. From a judicial point of view, our lawyer is doing his job to remove this censorship as quickly as possible,” he explains.

Without being able to reveal the content of the article, the journalist affirmed that Laurent Wauquiez, the Republican president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, was also a victim of the practices of the mayor of Saint-Etienne. “What we can say, however, is that this is a new aspect of the Saint-Etienne affair. We hope to be able to reveal new practices of which Laurent Wauquiez, a member of the party, was the victim. LR like Gaël Perdriau. He too was the victim of rather heinous political practices on the part of Gaël Perdriau. It is on these new facts that we wanted to question Gaël Perdriau last week, we obtained his answers but we are in the process of inability to publish information and recount its practices.”

For journalists from Mediapart, it is a real attack on the freedom of the press. “This is the first time in the history of Mediapart, and we consulted lawyers, journalists, who tell us that they have never seen that. We face prior censorship. We have no difficulty answering for our investigations, including before the courts, it often happens to us, we consider it a responsibility when we publish articles to defend the quality of our work, that we carry out serious investigations, respectful of the rights of each and of the contradictory”, insists the journalist.

“It is his political practices that interest us”

“Here, we are not in this register. This is a decision ordered by the president of the Paris court in the context of an emergency, derogatory procedure. In the context of the procedure whose We are victims, we have not been informed and we have not had the opportunity to defend our arguments. We have only been informed of our publication ban. Gaël Perdriau explains that the information we were about to publish would undermine to his private life, which is obviously not the case. His private life does not interest us, it is his political practices that interest us and that we have been questioning since the end of August. We would have liked to be able to defend our arguments in court,” said Antton Rouget.

“It was Gaël Perdriau himself who warned justice. Obviously, Laurent Wauquiez was warned upstream, we asked him as we had done for Gilles Artigues on the sextape affair. We even collected the reaction of Laurent Wauquiez, the article is ready definitively because we had all the reactions. There is no dispute on the merits, on the validity of our information. On the other hand, Gaël Perdriau found a way to prevent us to publish this information by leaving the rails of the law of 1881 on the freedom of the press”, concludes the journalist of Mediapart.