“Ethically, deontologically, so that the city can be peaceful and find a little serenity, I don’t see how it can last very long” with Gaël Perdriau at the town hall of Saint-Étienne, estimated UDI deputy Lionel Boucher this Tuesday, September 27 on France Bleu Holy-Etienne-Loire, the day after an agitated city council, due to the intimate video blackmail case revealed by Médiapart.
>> “This story aims to destroy me”, declares the mayor of Saint-Étienne de Gaël Perdriau during a municipal council
While the left-wing elected officials have submitted a wish to the municipal council of Holy-Etienne Monday, September 26 to ask Elisabeth Borne that the Council of Ministers suspend Gaël Perdriau, the president of the UDI of the Loire, he is the only member of the municipal majority to clearly demand the resignation of the mayor. But, according to him, others think like him but do not speak because of“a system that handles fear and awe”. These persons “are afraid of perhaps being dismissed from their duties and of suffering humiliation”says Lionel Boucher.
“I remember when Gaël Perdriau called François Fillon, because he had been offered two suits, to leave the political scene. There, we have a physical victim, we have threats, we have blackmail, we have a political formation that has been sidelined for many years to only serve the rise of one person”he added.
“I think we haven’t taken the measure of things yet”
Lionel Boucher, deputy UDI at the town hall of Saint-Étienneat franceinfo
“A lot of things have come to light”since the revelation of the blackmail, he admitted, recounting having “saw Gilles Artigues undergo public humiliations in the majority council where he was rotting, giving a lesson or preventing him. We even went so far as to withdraw his mandate as first deputy and he almost had to say thank you”.
“We understand better everything that happened during all these years. (…) [A l’UDI,] we were never afraid to go into battle, never, for our ideas and for our values, and there we shouldn’t go there, it was important to sanitize, that we continue to preserve the majority, we understand better what had to be preserved”lamented the chosen one.
The case was revealed by Médiapart on August 26. Gilles Rossary-Lenglet told journalists that he had arranged a date for Gilles Artigues with an escort boy in 2014 to trap him. The video of this meeting allowed the municipal team of Gaël Perdriau to put pressure on his first deputy. Médiapart has also published several recordings of discussions, some of which, according to the media, clearly show that the mayor was aware of the blackmail which was aimed at Gilles Artigues.
Since these revelations, Gaël Perdriau and four other people have spent several hours in police custody. The mayor of Saint-Étienne was expelled from the Les Républicains party, he stepped down from his duties in the metropolis of Saint-Étienne, but not at the town hall.