A complaint for “aggravated blackmail” was filed on Monday August 29 by the former centrist first deputy of Saint-Etienne Gilles Artigues against Gaël Perdriau, mayor (Les Républicains, LR) of the city and president of the metropolis.
The complaint – which also targets Mr. Perdriau’s chief of staff, as well as one of his assistants and the latter’s former companion – was received on Monday morning and the case was moved to Lyon on the instructions of the prosecutor. general to the Lyon Court of Appeal, said the public prosecutor of Saint-Etienne, David Charmatz.
Friday, Mediapart revealed in a long investigation that Gilles Artigues would have been the victim of political blackmail after being trapped and filmed without his knowledge in the company of an escort boy in 2014. The set up would have been orchestrated by Samy Kefi-Jérôme, today deputy mayor in charge of schools, and his companion at the time, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who gave a behind-the-scenes look at Mediapart.
Gilles Artigues thinks he was drugged
The latter says that during a meeting in Paris dating back to the winter of 2014, a camera was installed in a hotel room in the capital. His former partner would have attracted Gilles Artigues there and paid for an escort before leaving ” on tip-toes “. The thirty-minute video he retrieves will then be cut and edited, and will be used to blackmail Gilles Artigues for several years in order to “put on a leash”.
Gilles Artigues’ lawyer, Me André Buffard, claims to have evidence, including conversations during which his client is threatened to disclose this video to his family. Still according to his lawyer, Mr. Artigues thinks he was drugged that evening: “He knows Mr. Kefi-Jérôme who brought him to his room for a trivial reason and made him drink. He doesn’t remember much after that. » Thinking that no one would believe his version, he did not dare to denounce the facts, until the investigation of Mediapart.
According to the investigation site, the mayor himself and his chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, were aware of this operation and even « mandated Samy [Kefi-Jérôme] to show the short video ». What both deny.
Solicited by The world, Gaël Perdriau claimed, Saturday August 27, to have never seen the content of the video and disputed “any notion of blackmail which would be linked to the decisions that Gilles Artigues has recently taken within the municipal team”. Vice-president of the metropolis in charge of housing and habitat, Gilles Artigues resigned in May from his function as first deputy to the town hall of Saint-Etienne, while remaining deputy within the municipal council. Samy Kefi-Jérôme acknowledged the existence of this video to Mediapartbut invoked the protection of his ” private life ” not to say more.
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