The mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR), accused of being the sponsor of a sextape to exert an alleged blackmail on his former first deputy, said Wednesday
"terribly injured"
and victim of a political
“relentlessness”
behind which he sees the hand of Laurent Wauquiez.
If he recognizes having mentioned in front of his former first deputy Gilles Artigues this video where the latter is massaged by a man in a hotel in Paris in 2015, the elected official assures in an interview with AFP and
Progrès
that c was simply to
'make him uncomfortable'
.
During this conversation, in November 2017, Gaël Perdriau strongly criticizes his first deputy for having
"exchanged at length"
with Laurent Wauquiez, LR president of the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region, on the occasion of the recent congress of mayors.
"So when my first deputy, in whom I had complete confidence, plotted behind my back with Laurent Wauquiez, obviously I see red"
, explains Gaël Perdriau,
"especially since his explanations of these secret meetings are particularly evasive"
.
Read alsoIn Saint-Étienne, the political destiny of Gaël Perdriau mired in the “sextape” scandal
“I am indeed looking, the rising tone, to hurt him. This video I heard about is an opportunity for me to bring it up to make him uncomfortable
, ”he says, while ensuring that it is the only time he has discussed the video with him.
According to him, this exchange irritates him all the more because at the time,
"in 2017, we are in a period of extreme tension between the region and the city of Saint-Etienne"
, tensions born, he says, of his position taken in favor of Bruno Le Maire, a year earlier for the LR primaries.
Laurent Wauquiez, according to him, perceived it as
"a declaration of war"
.
In an article of September 12,
Mediapart
publishes the recording of this exchange, where we hear, in very crude terms, Gaël Perdriau and his ex-chief of staff threatening his deputy.
At the end of August, the confessions to
Médiapart
of a former close friend of the town hall claiming to have shot an intimate video to blackmail Gilles Artigues gave rise to the opening of a judicial investigation for, in particular, aggravated blackmail.
Read alsoDavid Lisnard asked Gaël Perdriau to withdraw from the AMF
Namely accused by Gilles Artigues, placed in police custody in mid-September, quoted in damning audio recordings, the mayor has always protested his innocence:
"I am neither the sponsor, nor the organizer, nor a user of this video .
I have never had or seen this document
,” he repeated on Wednesday.
“I suffer a relentless with shared political interests.
My lawyer transmitted to the judge a very clear testimony which shows that the publication of the
Mediapart articles
is part of a much older political logic involving Gilles Artigues and people extremely close to Laurent Wauquiez, ”
he says.
