Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, deputy for education at the town hall of Saint-Etienne, is accused of blackmailing the intimate video concerning Gilles Artigues, the former first deputy. He denies setting up a trap.
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“Gilles Artigues was fully aware of what was going to happen in the hotel room“, said Monday, September 12 with France Bleu Saint-Etienne Loire Mathias Chichportich, lawyer for the education assistant at the town hall of Saint-Étienne, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, implicated in a case of blackmail at the intimate video targeting the former first deputy mayor of St-Etienne, Gilles Artigues. Samy Kéfi-Jérôme disputes, through his lawyer, having blackmailed the former first deputy.
This is the first time that Samy-Kéfi-Jérôme has spoken through his lawyer, since the Mediapart revelations on August 26. According to the lawyer, elements contesting the version of Gilles Artigues on the course of this evening were transmitted to the parquet floor of Lyon, in particular exchanges of telephone messages.
Friday August 26, an investigation published by Mediapart claimed that Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, as well as his companion at the time Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, had organized in 2014 a filmed meeting with a gay escort to trap and muzzle Gilles Artigues. According to Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, this video then allowed the municipal team of Gaël Perdriau and his director of cabinet Pierre Gauttieri to put pressure on Gilles Artigues and to dissuade him from a possible dissidence. It was he, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who revealed the affair to Médiapart. He claims to have received 50,000 euros from the town hall to trap Gilles Artigues.
In this case, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme is implicated in the context of a judicial investigation entrusted to the Lyon public prosecutor’s office for “invasion of the privacy of private life, aggravated blackmail, embezzlement of public property by a person responsible for a public office, breach of trust and concealment of these offences”. Searches took place at the town hall of Saint-Etienne on Monday, September 5. For his part, Gaël Perdriau denies having exerted political pressure on Gilles Artigues, and of having asked him in particular not to stand in the legislative elections. He had reacted to France Inter evoking a “machination“.