In addition to the chosen one, four other protagonists suspected of being involved in the case are also in police custody.
The mayor of Saint-Étienne Gaël Perdriau was heard on Tuesday, September 13 in Lyon as part of a judicial investigation opened after accusations of political sextape blackmail targeting the elected LR and his close guard. Gaël Perdriau is “interviewed at his request” with the members of his cabinet, “for the truth to come outin the face of these accusations, announced to the press his first deputy, Jean-Pierre Bergé.
Four other people from the municipality and suspected of being involved in the case were also placed in police custody, the Lyon prosecutor’s office indicated to the Figaroconfirming information from Progress . They would have been summoned this morning to the premises of the judicial police in Lyon.
“Invasion of privacy”
The mayor told his first deputy that he was approaching these hearings “with serenity“, but very quickly, in the middle of the morning, his political family announced in a press release that he had launched “an exclusion procedure” against him.
At the beginning of September, the Lyon public prosecutor’s office opened a judicial investigation into this case concerning the filming and use of a sexual video recorded in 2014 in which Gilles Artigues, former first municipal deputy and former deputy known for his Catholic commitment. , was being massaged by a man in a hotel room in Paris.
The goal was to politically neutralize a centrist first deputy whose dissident candidacy for the municipal elections of 2008 had cost the town hall to the right, according to Gilles Rossary-Lenglet. Accusations “despicable“, according to Gaël Perdriau.
This investigation for “invasion of privacy, aggravated blackmail, embezzlement of public property by a person in charge of a public function, breach of trust and concealment of these offenses” was launched after a complaint from Gilles Artigues aimed at namely the mayor, one of his deputies and the former companion of the latter.
Read alsoComplaint for sextape blackmail against the mayor LR of Saint-Etienne
The Mediapart information site, which had revealed the affair by publishing detailed confessions of this ex-companion, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, on a “smearing of mannersin Saint-Etienne, posted new overwhelming recordings for the 50-year-old elected official and his chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri online on Monday.
Gilles Rossary-Lenglet claims to have been paid for this video made, according to him, at the request of the mayor and his close guard, thanks to fictitious services invoiced to two associations subsidized by the town hall. “The price I gave was 50,000 euros (…), it may seem huge, but (not so much) if you put in the balance that you hold your first deputy, that you hold your municipality with your eyes closed throughout a warrant“, he said in a video interview to Mediapart.
“Lessons Giver”
After the new revelations from the news site on Monday, the four LR parliamentarians from the Loire and twelve elected officials from the left-wing municipal opposition asked the mayor and president of the Metropolis to step back.
On Twitter, the boss of senators LR Bruno Retailleau denounced “intolerable mafia actsand thanked “the direction of the Republicans to have excluded Gaël Perdriau”while the candidate for the presidency of LR, Éric Ciotti – whose line of firmness is strongly criticized by the elected official -, castigated a “lesson giver“showing according to him”the terrifying face of the worst abjection“.
LR’s press release specifies that his exclusion will be “shortlyvalidated by the party’s Political Bureau. “If it is now up to justice, in view of the latest revelations on Monday, to decide on the guilt and the degree of involvement of Mr. Perdriau, the Republicans can only condemn the despicable methods used by the mayor of Saint -Etienne against a political rival“, according to the text.
The mayor is heard under police custody at the same time as his chief of staff Pierre Gautierri, a municipal deputy sitting in the Region, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, his ex-companion Gilles Rossary-Lenglet as well as the deputy director of cabinet Claire Vocason, indicated in a press release the parquet floor of Lyon, confirming the information of the Progress. Some of these hearings were lifted by decision of the investigating judges. These were intended to collect the first statements of the main protagonists of this affair “and in particular those of those who had expressed themselves in the media in recent weeks and in particular after the searches carried out on September 5, 2022“, specifies the press release. “The investigations consisting in particular in the exploitation of the various media and documents seized during the searches are continuing“Adds the floor.
Municipal councilor in Saint-Etienne in the UDF-Rad team from 1995 to 2008, Gaël Perdriau then sat in the opposition during the mandate of Maurice Vincent (PS), before being elected mayor in 2014 then re-elected in 2020, while presiding over the city of Saint-Etienne.
After taking a stand many times against “the ultraliberal policy of Emmanuel MacronAt the start of his first term, the elected official then fell out with the leadership of his party after criticizing the right-wing of the LR presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse and her rapprochement with Éric Ciotti. These criticisms have earned him to be removed from the vice-presidency of the Republicans.