The year 2024 got off to a bad start for the mayor of Saint-Étienne, Gaël Perdriau. Between judicial summons, new calls to resign and indictment for blackmail, the mayor faces a complicated agenda at the start of the year.
“Despite the pressure I am under, the insults addressed to me and the disappointments I am experiencing, I will fight to demonstrate my innocence,” declared the mayor of Saint-Etienne, Gaël Perdriau (ex-LR). Indicted last April for “blackmail” in the sex tape blackmail affair, his former chief of staff is also the subject of additional indictment for “criminal conspiracy”. After sixteen months of affair, the mayor of Saint-Étienne should be heard by the investigating judges of Lyon, responsible for investigating the filming and the use of compromising images intended to blackmail the centrist municipal deputy Gilles Artigues, January 19. Gaël Perdriau had refused to end his duties as mayor, even after his exclusion from the Republicans.
New calls for his resignation were launched at the start of the year, after the announcement of the indictment of his former right-hand man, Pierre Gauttieri. During his last hearing by the investigating judges, the former chief of staff ended up questioning his former boss by assuring that he had given the “green light” to the mission of political neutralization of the centrist Gilles Artigues . He also admitted to having settled the financing, according to Mediapart.
On Monday, the last elements of the affair should appear on the menu of the deputies’ office, then of the majority council which Gaël Perdriau must chair. But for the various elected officials, there is only one solution: Gaël Perdriau must leave. Claude Liogier, one of his last three deputies still at LR, is one of the signatories of the call for the “immediate resignation” of the mayor of Saint-Étienne. A petition which brings together most of the LR elected officials of the Loire. “Leaving is the only way out” for environmentalists too. “In the turmoil that is coming with the collapse of the Casino group, our territory needs solid and credible governance more than ever,” recall the elected PS and DVG, in a press release.