"This is the normal procedure that is taking its course," Pierre Chappel, communication officer (BIEN in charge of communication) in the mayor's office, told AFP.
He was summoned by the judicial police Tuesday afternoon in Lyon, at the same time as his former chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri, his former deputy Samy Kefi-Jérôme and the ex-companion of the latter Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, at the origin of the case revealed by Mediapart. The four hearings were confirmed to AFP from a source close to the investigation.
The mayor of Saint-Etienne and president of the Metropolis, elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2020, has been for three months at the heart of a judicial investigation into the filming and use of a video of a sexual nature in which we can see his former centrist first deputy and political rival Gilles Artigues being massaged by a man in a hotel room, end of 2014.
Named by Mr. Artigues, placed in custody in mid-September 2022, cited in damning audio recordings, the 50-year-old elected official has always claimed his innocence and repeated several times that he would not resign, even in the event of an indictment.
Quickly excluded from LR, Gaël Perdriau withdrew from his functions, while maintaining himself at the head of the municipality and the Metropolis of Saint-Etienne, which had voted in December in favor of his resignation.
In the face of criticism, the mayor has always defended the "presumption of innocence" by denouncing a "media shelling" linked according to him to a "hostile policy" of Laurent Wauquiez, the LR president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
The affair has already pushed him to dismiss his chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri, while his municipal deputy Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, accused of having shot the compromising images, has resigned.
© 2023 AFP