Pierre Gauttieri, the former chief of staff of the mayor of Saint-Etienne, was indicted on December 18 for “criminal conspiracy” in the sex tape affair aimed at blackmailing the centrist first deputy. This “supplementary indictment” was pronounced against the former right-hand man of Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR), in office from 2014 until his dismissal for “breach of trust” at the end of 2022, indicated the Lyon prosecutor’s office, confirming information from Mediapart.
During a new hearing by the investigating judges, Pierre Gauttieri, who had until then denied any responsibility in the filming of the compromising video, also directly implicated the mayor, affirming that the decision to blackmail the centrist Gilles Artigues aimed to neutralize him politically, according to Mediapart. “He gave the green light when it was submitted to him by me,” Pierre Gauttieri told the magistrates, according to extracts from the hearing minutes retrieved by the online media.
Gaël Perdriau “strongly” contests these new accusations
Faced with these new accusations, the mayor of Saint-Etienne “strongly” contested the “new declarations” of Pierre Gauttieri, which are, according to him, “in total contradiction with those he has made since the start of the procedure “. “And I maintain with the same force that I have not requested, organized, benefited, neither directly nor remotely, from any blackmail,” he wrote in a short press release. One of his lawyers said he was “scandalized by the renewed violations of the secrecy of the investigation”.
At the end of August 2022, the Mediapart information site revealed the existence of an intimate scene filmed in January 2015 in a Parisian hotel with an escort boy to blackmail the first deputy to neutralize him politically. On April 6, Gaël Perdriau was indicted for blackmail, at the same time as Pierre Gauttieri, his former deputy Samy Kéfi-Jérôme and the latter’s ex-companion, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet. He always refused to resign, claiming his innocence.