2023-11-08 06:23:32
The Book Festival has barely opened its doors this October morning when two smiling young women walk around the main marquee to distribute bookmarks to the public. Bookmarks like no other: the official poster for this 42nd edition has been hijacked with shocking slogans, “Perdriau resignation”, “Perdriau clears”. The target of the Defeat Committee at the origin of this action: the mayor of the city, Gaël Perdriau, 51, indicted for blackmail in a “sex tape” story revealed by Mediapart in August 2022. An affair as frightening as it was absurd which took place within the town hall itself and continues to shake the city of Saint-Etienne.
To understand how Saint-Etienne found itself at the heart of a scandal where the unhealthy competes with the grotesque, we must go back to 2014, the year when Gaël Perdriau, a former salesman at EDF, was elected mayor under the label Les Republicans (LR). A victory obtained against the outgoing socialist, Maurice Vincent, thanks to an alliance with the centrists, led by the former deputy Gilles Artigues. As soon as the latter was appointed first deputy, according to the agreement concluded between the two parties, the situation deteriorated behind closed doors at the town hall. Mr. Perdriau and his chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, seem to have set themselves the objective of eradicating any potential competition or opposition. “I was better known than him, I had more networks, they said to themselves: “We have to eliminate him””deciphers Gilles Artigues, the victim of the “sex tape”, in front of The world.
In January 2015, a terrible trap was set for him by one of his deputies, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, and the latter’s companion, the communicator Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who, very talkative in front of the police, recognized the facts and today claimed today having acted on behalf of the mayor and his chief of staff, Mr. Gauttieri.
Read also: Blackmail in Saint-Etienne: Gilles Artigues, former first deputy of Gaël Perdriau, will file a complaint for “organized gang ambush”
The barbouzerie operation, recounted in detail by Mediapart, takes place in Paris on the sidelines of a meeting in a hotel located near the Gare de Lyon. Mr. Kéfi-Jérôme informs Mr. Artigues that one of his friends is going to join them for dinner and suggests that they come for an aperitif in his room. The “friend” is actually a escort boy recruited for the occasion by Mr. Rossary-Lenglet. Gilles Artigues tells Monde having had a drink and not remembering what happened next. Eighteen months later, this practicing Catholic, married and father of four children, who had opposed marriage for all, was suddenly brought back to reality when Samy Kéfi-Jérôme showed him an extract from a video in which we sees him in a delicate posture being massaged by the escort. This three-minute film, entitled In Bed with Gilles Artigues, constitutes a “life insurance policy”the young elected official explains to him: if the first deputy does not disappear from the political landscape, the video will be leaked and his career destroyed. “My life stopped, I wanted to throw myself under the tram”confides Mr. Artigues today.
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