The elected official, excluded from the Republicans, proclaims his innocence and repeats that he will not resign, even in the event of an indictment in the blackmail case targeting Gilles Artigues, his former first deputy.
The case has shaken the city of Saint-Etienne (Loire) since September 2022. The mayor, Gaël Perdriau, was brought Thursday, April 6 to the courthouse in Lyon (Rhône), to be presented to an investigating judge, announced the prosecution. The elected official was again taken into custody on Tuesday, in the context of this file of blackmail to intimate video, of which his former first deputy, the centrist Gilles Artigues, accuses him.
I’former chief of staff of Gaël Perdriau, Pierre Gauttieri, has already announced his own indictment in the file, Thursday. And two other men were referred: the former deputy Samy Kéfi-Jérôme and the former companion of the latter, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet. Gaël Perdriau, expelled from the Republicans because of this affair, has always proclaimed his innocence and repeated several times that he would not resign, even in the event of an indictment.
Franceinfo summarizes this for you political scandal against a backdrop of local rivalries, which the judicial police have been investigating for seven months.
Mediapart reveals that the first deputy was the victim of political blackmail
Mediapart reveals on August 26, 2022 that the first deputy mayor of Saint-Etienne between 2014 and 2022, the centrist Gilles Artigues, was the victim of political blackmail for eight years. According to the investigative media, the case dates back to the winter of 2014 and involves two main protagonists: Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, at the time elected to the municipal council of Saint-Etienne, and his ex-companion Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, source of the revelations.
According to the story of Mediapart, the two men took advantage of a meeting in Paris to film, without his knowledge, Gilles Artigues in a hotel room with an escort boy. This last, paid by Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, was not aware of this trap. “After this evening at the hotel, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme returns to Saint-Etienne with a raw video of 30 minutes 33 seconds in which the escort performs an erotic massage by Gilles Artigues. The chosen one appears naked on the bed , the shirtless escort. The film does not show any sexual relationship, but its content is sufficiently compromising for the first deputy”, details Mediapart.
According to the article, this recording was then used to blackmail Gilles Artigues, “father very involved in the Catholic community”. The goal? “Containing the influence of the centrist elected official” and avoid “political dissent”. In 2008, his candidacy for the second round of municipal elections divided the right and contributed to the election of Maurice Vincent (PS).
Gilles Artigues files a complaint and denounces a blackmail which “rotten his life”
Three days after the publication of the Mediapart investigation, Gilles Artigues files a complaint for “aggravated blackmail, ambush in an organized gang, embezzlement of public funds and non-denunciation of criminal acts”. It targets Gilles Rossary-Lenglet and Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, as well as the mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau. Why did you wait eight years to go to court? “Initially, Gilles Artigues was not aware of what had really happened in this hotel room”, in particular having the feeling of having been drugged. Then he gave in to blackmail “for the sake of preserving his family and loved ones”, had then replied to AFP his lawyer, André Buffard.
Gilles Artigues, who had resigned in May 2022 from his duties as first deputy, spoke the same day on his Facebook account, saying that this blackmail had “rotten the life”. “I would like to thank you for the hundreds of messages of support that you have sent to me since Mediapart revealed the conspiracy of which I was the victim. This life which is so beautiful and which I have several times thought of leaving , so desperate was I”said the one who had abruptly interrupted his campaign for the legislative elections in the spring despite his nomination LR-UDI.
Compromising recordings for Gaël Perdriau and his chief of staff
According to Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, the LR mayor of Saint-Etienne and his chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, are in charge of this blackmail affair. He claims to have touched with Samy Kéfi-Jérôme “50,000 euros” on the part of the municipality for having trapped Gilles Artigues, via subsidies to Saint-Etienne associations which would then have paid him.
Gaël Perdriau and Pierre Gauttieri both deny having been informed of this operation. The first even lodges a complaint for slanderous denunciation. But excerpts of conversations in the form of sound recordings dating back to the spring of 2022, published by Mediapart on September 6, undermine the defense of the city councilor. We hear Gaël Perdriau, in the company of Gilles Rossary-Lenglet and Pierre Gauttieri, pronounce the following sentence: “There are things you did together. For example, the Artigues shot, you were two.” An evocation of the case which suggests that the right-wing elected official was well aware of the existence of this video.
A second series of recordings broadcast by Mediapart on September 12 drives the point home. Gaël Perdriau declares there to Gilles Artigues to be aware of the existence of this video, which would have reached him by a “USB key”. The mayor threatens to reveal its contents by “little circles” And “with parsimony”. In another recorded conversation, it was the turn of the chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, to threaten to spread the video, during an exchange in the presence of the mayor. “I have a video of you showing off with a guy. The very Catholic deputy Gilles Artigues, a very good father, in something like that? Go ahead, go explain yourself to the voters”, threatens Pierre Gauttieri.
Pushed towards the exit, the mayor of Saint-Etienne is excluded from the Republicans
On September 13, Gaël Perdriau, his chief of staff, deputy chief of staff Claire Vocanson, as well as Gilles Rossary-Lenglet and Samy Kéfi-Jérôme are placed in police custody, within the framework of the judicial investigation opened by the prosecution. All custody is lifted at the end of the day, without prosecution at that time.
The same day, Aurélien Pradié, then secretary general of the Republicans, announces an exclusion procedure against Gaël Perdriau. “The Republicans can only condemn the despicable methods used by the mayor of Saint-Etienne against a political rival”, explains the party in a press release. His final exclusion is effective mid-October. “I am deeply bruised”, reacts the interested party. Also faced with pressure from local elected officials, Gaël Perdriau ends up putting an end to the functions of his chief of staff, then withdraws from the presidency of the metropolis.
A legal battle between Mediapart and Gaël Perdriau
During its investigation into this case, Mediapart discovered “unpublished facts which, once again, call into question the practices of the mayor of Saint-Etienne, in particular in the use of rumor as a political instrument”, according to the site’s publishing director, Edwy Plenel. This time “victim” is the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez. But Gaël Perdriau obtains from justice, in extremis, a publication ban, denouncing a “invasion of his privacy“. After several appeals and a vast controversy, Mediapart, which denounces a “prior censorship”, is authorized to publish his article at the end of November.
This reveals a new recording, made by Gilles Artigues in the mayor’s office in November 2017. We hear Gaël Perdriau accusing Laurent Wauquiez of being a “child criminal“. Even before the publication of the article, the mayor of Saint-Etienne had admitted during a press conference to have “made rude comments without any basis”.
Despite everything, Gaël Perdriau has so far stood up to his local political opponents by refusing to resign from his elected offices, citing the “presumption of innocence”.