“My great strength is my innocence, that’s what keeps me going,” said the mayor of Saint-Étienne Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR) on Monday, in response to calls for resignation relaunched by his new updates. under investigation in the sextape blackmail case which has shaken his city since August 2022. “The indictment is not a conviction”, recalled the mayor and president of the metropolis, before the opening of the first municipal council of the year.
In mid-January, the 51-year-old elected official was indicted for “participation in a criminal conspiracy” and “embezzlement of public funds by a holder of public authority”.
In April 2023, he had already been indicted for “blackmail” in this intimate video affair, which had earned him a first wave of calls for resignation.
At the heart of the scandal, his possible role in the shooting in January 2015 and the use of a recording in which we see his centrist ex-first deputy Gilles Artigues being massaged by an escort boy in a hotel room.
Request for revocation by the opposition
Heard by the investigating judges in December, his former chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, also indicted in this case, affirmed that Gaël Perdriau had given the “green light” to the blackmail and managed its financing, according to trials -verbals obtained by Mediapart.
To the disavowal of his political family and the recent defections of several elected officials from his majority, is now added a request for revocation, addressed Sunday by the three opposition groups (PS-DVG, Ecologists, PCF) to the Prime Minister.
This procedure, provided for by the General Code of Local Authorities, consists of hearing the elected official concerned in order to decide whether the incriminated facts are likely to deprive him of the moral authority necessary for the exercise of his missions.
A first request was rejected at the end of 2022.
Also read “I was told, we have you on a leash”: the testimony of Gilles Artigues, victim of the Saint-Étienne sex tape
Last week, the former socialist mayor of Saint-Étienne (2008-2014) Maurice Vincent also urged the majority to let go of the mayor.
“The presumption of innocence, an essential guarantee of the rule of law (…) cannot be used to perpetuate the unjust collective punishment inflicted on our city for more than a year,” he argued.
“I do not want to agree with those who seek to destroy me, to dirty me, to drag me through the mud,” Perdriau declared Monday during a press briefing, saying he was “very calm, very serene.”
“We continue to work in the general interest of the city and its residents,” he said.
Away from the metropolis, he remains at the head of a group of 34 elected officials, the majority in the Saint-Étienne municipal council which has 59.