In Agde, a coastal town in the beautiful south of France with around 30,000 inhabitants, they imagine they are on a set – that’s how crazy the story surrounding their mayor sounds. “We’re excited for the next episode like it’s a series on Netflix,” someone told the newspaper Le Parisien, who had asked around on the market. We then have to discuss the genre of the series that takes place there, anything is possible: local farce, tragicomedy and political thriller.
This much is certain: Gilles d’Ettore, 55 years old, a former Gaullist member of the Republic, has been in prison for a few days. The judiciary suspects the mayor of having taken 300,000 euros from the city treasury to pay a well-known clairvoyant and healer who claims she can contact loved ones in the afterlife. The woman is 44 years old and is known as Sophia. She is also in custody.
D’Ettore, it is said, never got over his father’s death. That was a long time ago: 1996. He met Sophia for the first time four years ago, and indeed: she had a connection to his father, who now spoke through her in a deep, masculine voice. Unparalleled luck, of course. What exactly they talked about, father and son, is not known.
Psychic celebrates luxurious wedding
But the father obviously had a number of very urgent pieces of advice for his son, and they only concerned the person through whom he spoke: Sophia, that is. He advised him to pay her richly for her services, and not only that. D’Ettore Jr. should also employ Sophia’s husband in the city administration, absolutely. So he became the department head in the mayor’s office. And things should also get better for Sophia’s six children: from then on they were driven around the city in company cars, as they wished.
That was of course noticeable, Agde is small, only in summer, with all the tourists, does it become a little like a big city.
The police tapped the protagonists’ phones for weeks, then they searched the offices and also arrested Sophia’s husband, but only briefly before he was released again. The suspicion is corruption, embezzlement of public funds and fraud. The mayor claims that he paid Sophia with his own money and that he also paid for her wedding party: luxurious location, 200 guests.
During the interrogation, Sophia admitted that the voice from the afterlife was a trick; she just had ventriloquism skills. Sometimes she performed directly in front of him. But it was easier from home on the phone because she got help from a computer.
The Agathois and Agathoises, as the residents of Agde are called, are astonished, especially because their mayor never seemed to be easily influenced. He didn’t seem to have any esoteric inclinations either. And so they wait for the next installment of this story, ready for all sorts of punchlines. Incidentally, Gilles d’Ettore cannot resign, even if he wanted to. For this he would have to sign a letter – in the town hall. And he’s in prison.