The mayor of the French city of Saint-Etienne went on trial on Monday, September 22, accused of ordering a video to be made of his deputy with a male prostitute. Gaël Perdriau, who denies blackmail charges, sat through a closed hearing near Gilles Artigues, his former number two, when what has become known as "the sex-tape of Saint-Etienne" was shown.
Artigues, a Roman Catholic who had spoken against gay marriage, was secretly filmed in a Paris hotel with a male prostitute. Perdriau and three of his staff and deputies face charges of blackmail, criminal conspiracy and diverting public funds. Another of the mayor's former deputies, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, admitted to the court that he hid the camera in the hotel room.
He said it was ordered by Pierre Gauttieri, who was then the mayor's chief of staff. "The order was to trap Gilles Artigues over his repressed homosexuality," Kéfi-Jérôme said.
"I have no evidence that the mayor was aware of these things, but if Pierre Gauttieri makes such a commitment, I deduce that he must have had the approval" of Perdriau, added Kéfi-Jérôme. Kéfi-Jérôme's former companion, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who acknowledged his own political ambitions, openly accused the mayor, saying there was a "contract."
According to his account, peppered with salacious and scathing remarks, Perdriau and his chief of staff made an electoral agreement with Artigues during the 2014 municipal elections but feared he would not be loyal. Rossary-Lenglet, who first revealed the alleged plot in 2022, said he was given €40,000 from municipal funds in the form of subsidies to voluntary associations. Court President Brigitte Vernay said at the end of the day that she was troubled by Rossary-Lenglet's evidence.
"It's disconcerting: You admit everything to better accuse others," Vernay told the witness. "In your explanations, there is a complacency in smearing people that means we will receive them with a certain reserve."
Perdriau, who risks up to 10 years in jail if found guilty, remains mayor of the southeastern industrial city of 175,000 people. He has not ruled out running again in municipal elections scheduled for 2026, but told Agence France-Presse (AFP) ahead of the trial that first, he had to "rid myself of this sword of Damocles."