Their mayor, Gilles d’Ettore (LR), in police custody? The residents, most often seniors, encountered Thursday March 21 in the streets of Agde, “fall from the clouds” after hearing the news in the press. Yves, 76 years old, “very happy” of the action of the mayor whom he encountered several times during association events, cannot believe it. What amazes him even more is the “clairvoyant and medium”, also in police custody, with whom the elected official is suspected of having embezzled public money. Most have never heard of it. Only Nathalie (1), 60 years old, claims to know that “many people go to this clairvoyant” which would be well established on the street. She, who judges Gilles d’Ettore “outgoing and rather friendly”nevertheless shares the generalized distrust of politicians and suspects the worst.
The outlines of the case became clearer this Thursday evening, after new details given by the Béziers prosecutor, informing of the placement in pre-trial detention of the mayor and the famous clairvoyant after their indictment. The chosen one for “embezzlement, illegal taking of interests and corruption” ; the clairvoyant and her husband – who remains free – for “fraud, concealment of embezzlement by a person holding public authority, concealment of corruption and concealed work”. It is indeed this clairvoyant, medium and “healer”, a 44-year-old self-entrepreneur who has acquired “a certain notoriety”, in the words of the prosecution, which is at the heart of the story. Friend of the mayor of Agde since 2020, she would have made him believe, like others, that he was receiving calls from a supernatural being and would have taken advantage of them.
“A male-appearing voice” that the mayor believed had powers
To do this, she is suspected of having used a “stratagem consisting of changing one’s voice to many people, including family members and close friends”according to the prosecutor’s press release, allowing him to use “on the phone this seemingly masculine voice, calm and hoarse”. And not just on the phone, according to Free Middaywhich describes a “a clairvoyant ventriloquist, able to produce astonishing sounds by imperceptibly moving her lips“. “When we look at this woman and we hear this male voice that emerges, we cannot imagine that it is coming out of this body. It’s stunning», Explains to the local newspaper a source close to the investigation, having witnessed a demonstration of this astonishing talent in police custody.
“This voice mainly encouraged his interlocutors to care about the well-being of this woman, including materially”, specifies the prosecution. Gilles d’Ettore, 55, allegedly obeyed her orders, recruiting five people from the clairvoyant’s entourage, including her husband, appointed director of the city’s technical services, and misappropriating public funds or property, according to the prosecutor, “to offer him many largesse or benefits”. The mayor of Agde would have been deeply convinced of the existence of “the voice” and that this one “was gifted with supernatural powers”, again according to the prosecutor. He reportedly only realized he was being scammed when investigators showed him a video of the woman altering her voice. On the other hand, he has so far denied having committed any crime, said the prosecutor’s press release.
Residents critical of its management
In the streets of Agde, even before knowing all these details, some residents remained critical of the mayor’s action. Because what many Agathois met at the open-air market on the banks of the peaceful Hérault river reproach it above all is for having abandoned the city center which has lost its small businesses and has deteriorated, for the benefit of the tourist sites of Cap d’Agde and Grau d’Agde, delivered to the appetites of investors. “Real estate business in Cape Town never stops”together ensure Nadine, 68 years old, and Mireille, 81 years old, settled in the Agathois city center since their retirement and, for the second, nostalgic for the city “alive” of her youth and her clothing and jewelry boutiques, where she bought her wedding outfit.
Far from this surprising legal affair, elegant sixty-year-old Nelly, who has lived in the southern city for three years, focuses for her part on municipal inaction in the heart of the city, where she is staying, while “the streets are dirty” and the property tax increases, “already twice in three years”. A question of priorities.
(1) The first name has been changed