The ex-LR mayor of Saint-Etienne Gaël Perdriau, mired in a case of political sex-tape blackmail which has shaken his city since September 2022, was again placed in police custody on Tuesday by the judicial police in Lyon, a indicated his office, confirming information from FranceInfo.
"It's the normal procedure that is taking its course," Pierre Chappel, communications officer in the mayor's office, told AFP.
The elected official was summoned by the judicial police on Tuesday afternoon in Lyon, at the same time as his former chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri, his former deputy Samy Kefi-Jérôme and the latter's ex-companion Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, at the origin of the case revealed by Mediapart. The four hearings were confirmed to AFP by a source close to the investigation.
The mayor of Saint-Etienne and president of the Métropole, elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2020, has been at the heart of a judicial investigation for three months into the shooting and use of a sexual video in which we can see his former centrist first deputy and political rival Gilles Artigues being massaged by a man in a hotel room, at the end of 2014.
Namely accused by Mr. Artigues, placed in police custody in mid-September 2022, quoted in damning audio recordings, the 50-year-old elected official has always claimed his innocence and repeated several times that he would not resign, even in the event of indictment.
Quickly excluded from LR, Gaël Perdriau retired from his duties, while remaining at the head of the municipality and the Metropolis of Saint-Etienne, which had nevertheless voted in December in favor of his resignation.
Faced with criticism, the mayor has always defended the "presumption of innocence" by denouncing a "media shelling" linked according to him to a "hostile policy" of Laurent Wauquiez, the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
The case has already prompted him to dismiss his chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri, while his municipal deputy Samy Kefy-Jerôme, accused of having shot the compromising images, resigned.
04/04/2023 17:26:09 - Saint-Étienne (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
