Saint-Etienne: called to resign, Gaël Perdriau remains supported by his majority

A large part of the councilors of the municipal majority of Saint-Etienne expressed their support for Mayor Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR) on Monday.

He was called upon to resign by many elected officials for his involvement in a blackmail case.

“We would like to express our amazement at the political and media surge of recent months”, declare in a press release 32 of the 47 elected representatives of the majority, invoking “publications based on illegal recordings, disseminated out of context and carried out in a private setting

question us”.

After revelations from Mediapart, the 50-year-old elected official finds himself at the heart of a judicial investigation into the filming and use for political purposes of a sexual video in which we can see his former centrist first deputy. , Gilles Artigues, being massaged by a man in a hotel room, late 2014.

Laurent Wauquiez target of slander

Namely accused by Gilles Artigues, placed in police custody in mid-September, quoted in damning audio recordings, Gaël Perdriau has always claimed his innocence.

"Only justice should be the recipient of the different elements, and the opposing versions, in this case", affirmed Monday the supports of the city councilor, calling "for calm, serenity, and to let work in a on the other hand justice and on the other hand Gael Perdriau and his majority”.

On December 1, seven elected officials from the municipal majority asked Gaël Perdriau to "ask the question of whether he should remain at the head of Saint-Etienne and the metropolis", the day after the dissemination of new revelations from Mediapart, reporting this times the slanderous remarks of the mayor towards his former ally Laurent Wauquiez, LR president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region.

Twenty-five elected officials from the Loire, mostly right-wingers, had also signed a call for his resignation on the same day.

During a meeting on Monday, the majority of the vice-presidents of the Saint-Etienne metropolis asked Gaël Perdriau for an effective withdrawal, or even a resignation, from the presidency of this structure of 53 municipalities by its next assembly scheduled for Thursday.

Definitively excluded from LR last month, Gaël Perdriau declared before his municipal council that he intended to remain in office at the head of the town hall and the metropolis even in the event of indictment, invoking the presumption of innocence.