After having searched Gabriel Matzneff's home on Thursday morning, February 13, investigators are now interested in Christian Giudicelli, a close friend of the writer, according to information from Médiapart . He accompanied her regularly on trips to the Philippines, where Matzneff is said to have had sex with minors. In an interview with the New York Times , Gabriel Matzneff also reveals that Christian Giudicelli would have hidden at home documents that could compromise him, including letters and photos of Vanessa Springora.
See also: The Parisian home of Gabriel Matzneff raided
Investigators seek in particular to establish the degree of the relation which links the two men. Twice, in his published works, Christian Giudicelli mentions his “ unalterable complicity ” with Matzneff. A friendship of almost 40 years.
78-year-old Christian Giudicelli is also an author. He notably directed the collection La fantaisie du Voyageur published by Rocher, and published Matzneff. Member of the jury for the Prix Renaudot and of the Gallimard reading committee, he showed himself to be of unfailing support towards his friend, as Patrick Besson reports to Le Monde : “ He explains to us that Gabriel is in a bad patch, that his books are not selling, that he has a heartache and that he is sick . ”
Read also: Bernard Pivot about Matzneff: "I didn't have the words I needed"
According to Médiapart , the two writers used codes in their works to identify themselves. 804 for Gabriel Matzneff, and 811 for Christian Giudicelli ... with reference to the numbers of the rooms they occupied in Manila. “ During our first stay, at the Tropicana hotel, he lived in room 804 (Eight o four) and I in room 811 (Eight one one): so, by chatting, we got into the habit of identifying ourselves rather than by our first names and, when it comes to evoking, here and there, in a short paragraph, small rascality and nonsense of which we hardly feel guilty, my dear Eight o four takes care to hide his dear Christian under the 'Eight one one's protective wing: a sleight of hand that has long since abused its loyal readers ,' says Giudicelli in a text published in 2010 and entitled Gabriel infinitely kind .
Read also: Gabriel Matzneff will be tried in September 2021 for apology for crime
On the set of C à Vous , Wednesday February 12, the journalist Fabrice Arfi and co-author of the article published on Médiapart returned to the formulation used by Giudicelli in his book. " '' [...] Small rascality and nonsense of which we hardly feel guilty ''. It's a wonderful antiphrase: why don't they have to feel guilty? We are not saying that we must see in the literature necessarily judicial exhibits , he explains. Except that it is they themselves who organize the narrative of their lives according to this stratagem. […] The facts are there, before our eyes. Around this celebration of pedocrime danced, for decades, a whole cohort of admirers […] who forgot that there were victims. ”
In December, Christian Giudicelli told L'Obs that "when it comes to desire, we are often beside the law." Strict rules cannot be applied to intimate affairs. It seems to me that there are much more serious things. I am thinking, for example, of child labor, of what I have seen in different parts of the world ”. Before adding: “Times have changed. There is a breath of moraline. Les Under-sixteen [book by Gabriel Matzneff, editor's note] would be unpublishable now. Now, there are no things that shock me in this book. But everything becomes criminal. Look at Polanski. It all seems a little artificial to me, this abundance of testimony more than thirty years after the facts ” .
Read also: Dropped by Gallimard, Matzneff denounces an “excessive and aggressive” campaign
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