The mayor of French city of Saint-Etienne, France, has been charged for allegedly trying to black mail his political rival with a video of him being massaged by a male escort in a Paris hotel.
As reported by Le Monde, Gael Perdriau, who spend nearly two days in police custody, was charged late on Thursday with bribery, according to the local prosecutor's office. Perdriau is accused of using the secret recording of manipulating Gilles Artigues, who was his deputy before becoming his rival, over the course of eight years.
Artigues was Filmed Receiving Erotic Massage as Part of Set-Up by Perdiau
News of the scandal rocked Saint-Etienne last year when awhistle-blower told news outlet Mediapart about the existence of the video. The footage of Artigues, a Catholic married father of four, was filmed in 2015 allegedly on a hidden GoPro camera that belonged to the city council.
Mediapart said that the video had been filmed by Perdiau's staffer, and was a set-up deliberately designed to catch out Artigues. The escort himself, although paid for by Mr Kéfi-Jérôme, was reportedly not aware of the alleged trick.
Mediapart wrote: "After this evening at the hotel, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme returned to Saint-Étienne with a raw video of 30 minutes 33 seconds in which the escort performs an erotic massage on Gilles Artigues. The latter appears naked on the bed, the escort shirtless. "The film does not show any sexual relations, but its content is sufficiently compromising."
'I Have a Video of You with Your Butt in the Air with a Guy'
In an alleged recording that took place in the mayor's office in 2017, Perdriau is heard threatening Artigues over the video while his chief of staff Pierre Gauttieri says "your children will never recover," according to a report published by Mediapart,
As reported by Connexion France, another recording features Gauttieri telling Mr Artigues: "I have a video of you with your butt in the air with a guy. The very Catholic MP Gilles Artigues, a very good family man, involved in something like this? How will you explain that to voters?"
Gauttieri was also charged on Thursday, along with another deputy mayor and ally of Perdriau, Samy Kefi-Jerome. Whistle-blower Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who admitted to taking part in the plot to Mediapart, was charged with complicity in bribery.
Artigues Filed a Formal Complaint Years Later to 'Protect His Family'
Artigues filed a formal complaint several years after the incident for "aggravated blackmail, organised ambush, misappropriation of public funds and failure to report criminal acts."
He took so long to make a complaint and only did so now, his lawyer André Buffard said, because he wanted to "protect his family and his loved ones". Mr Buffard said that Mr Artigues even suspected he may have been drugged during the incident.
Perdriau has been expelled from the right-wing Les Républicains party to which he belonged, but has refused to step down as mayor and continues to protest his innocence. "I am not the instigator, the organizer or a user of this video," he told AFP in December. "I have never had or seen this document."
