He did not specify the counts of his indictment. In a brief statement, Pierre Gauttieri, the former chief of staff of the mayor of Saint-Etienne, announced that he had been “indicted in the so-called sextape affair”, Thursday April 6, leaving the Lyon court. . “I did not wish to respond to the magistrates,” he added.
This 55-year-old man had been brought before the investigating judges on Thursday morning after having spent forty hours in police custody, in the company of his former boss, the mayor of Saint-Etienne Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR), of the former municipal deputy Samy Kéfi-Jérôme and the former companion of the latter Gilles Rossary-Lenglet.
“Daubing of manners”
The affair broke out last year when Gilles Rossary-Lenglet revealed to Mediapart the existence of a compromising video shot in January 2015 in which we can see the former centrist first deputy Gilles Artigues, political rival of Gaël Perdriau , getting a massage from a man in a hotel room in Paris.
This 50-year-old assured in his confessions that this “smearing of morals” had been sponsored by the mayor and his entourage in order to neutralize the centrist. And he said he had been paid via fictitious services billed to two local associations subsidized by the town hall.
Mr. Rossary-Lenglet was also indicted on Thursday: he “did not slip away, he is at the origin of this affair, revealed it and assumed his position before the police and the judges”, declared his lawyer Me Sylvain Cormier. “There is an investigation that has gone through the revelations that have been made and lead to these presentations… We are waiting for the truth to come out,” he added, without specifying his client’s charges.
“Invasion of Privacy”
A judicial investigation was opened in September 2022 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”, after a complaint from Mr. Artigues.
Namely accused by Mr. Artigues, placed in police custody in mid-September 2022, quoted in damning audio recordings, the mayor and president of the metropolis of Saint-Etienne has always claimed his innocence and repeated several times that he would not resign , even in the event of an indictment.
Arched in his denials, Gaël Perdriau has so far refused to resign from his elective mandates, in the name of the “presumption of innocence”. Quickly excluded from LR after a first police custody of a few hours in mid-September 2022, he retired from his duties. The affair also prompted him to dismiss his chief of staff at the end of September, while his deputy Samy Kéfi-Jérôme resigned from his mandates at the municipality and the metropolis of Saint-Etienne.
