The verdict fell after fewer than twenty minutes of deliberation. On December 1st the mayor of the south-eastern city of Saint-Étienne, Gaël Perdriau, who had sought to turn his day in court into a moment of “truth”, was sentenced to five years in jail, one suspended, after being convicted of blackmail, conspiracy and misuse of public funds.
This sentence, accompanied by a five-year ban from holding public office, came with an immediate committal order, meaning that his imprisonment is not suspended in the event of an appeal. Gaël Perdriau will be summoned in the next few days to begin his time behind bars, in a situation similar to that of former president Nicolas Sarkozy after the latter's conviction in the Libyan election funding scandal.
The mayor was found guilty of being behind a sordid plot, against a backdrop of homophobia, targeting his former deputy, Gilles Artigues, a conservative Catholic whose political ambitions he sought to restrict by any means possible. The plot involved arranging to secretly film the deputy mayor with a male escort and then blackmailing him with the video recording.
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As the verdict dropped the 53-year-old mayor, who for more than three years has denied any part in the affair, stood for a moment on his own in the courtroom, his arms dangling by his side, before speaking at length with his lawyers. Perhaps he was thinking of the moment when he bragged before his council opponents that his trial would not just “fizzle out” but “explode”? A few yards away, members of Gilles Artigues's family hugged each other.
A few people applauded in the courtroom when the mayor and his accomplices were declared guilty of all the charges laid against them. “Not a word!” was the firm response from presiding judge Brigitte Vernay, who had already managed to impose her authority during the lengthy hearings in late September.
To explain the size of the sentences handed down – which are even longer than the prosecution had asked for - Brigitte Vernay said that the court “took into account the extreme seriousness of the acts before it: the plot, the video, the blackmail…” She told the defendants: “Nor did [the court] ignore the fact that some of you held elected office, that precious role of elected office, which imposes a duty of good conduct, dignity and image.” Addressing Gaël Perdriau she concluded: “Sir, you can no longer be mayor of Saint-Étienne.”
Leaving the courtroom, Gaël Perdriau’s lawyers, who had pleaded for him to be cleared, at once said they would appeal (see the appendix at the end of this article). But the mayor, who had kept on running his city as if nothing were amiss right up to the last few days, is now forced to give up the chair he had refused to vacate. He must also relinquish his position as president of the Saint-Étienne metropolitan authority, from which he had merely “stepped back” under pressure from fellow councillors.
Other defendants convicted
For the other three main defendants, the verdicts were no surprise: during the trial, these former lieutenants of the mayor had all admitted - for different reasons - to their part in the kompromat plot, sometimes expressing regrets that were more or less sincere. “The court found nothing in the way of excuses or reasons to lessen the gravity of the acts in question,” presiding judge Brigitte Vernay said during the ruling.
Spin doctor Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who describes himself as a “secret agent” by profession, was sentenced to four years in prison, with one year suspended and, like all those convicted, given an immediate committal order to go to jail. Aged 53, jobless, weakened by illness and living reclusively at home, he said he will not appeal against this sentence. “I've always said I'm not a good man. The law has done its job and has reminded everyone that these were very serious acts,” he told Mediapart. It was he who organised the trap in return for 40,000 euros of public money and a few small perks.
Since the affair began in 2022, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet has always owned up to his part in the blackmail, accusing his former accomplices, who had abandoned him. He shows no regret over Gilles Artigues, whose role in the 'Manif pour tous' demonstrations – the protests from more than a decade ago against the legalising of same-sex marriage - he criticises. “I had nothing left to lose. I wanted to make everyone face up to their responsibilities. Elected officials must understand that when they vote for harsher laws, they apply to them too,” he said.
His former partner, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, was given the same sentence. During the trial, his lawyer had done all he could to spare his client jail, emphasising the “deep sense of shame” he had shown in the witness box.
Before the scandal broke, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme had enjoyed a good reputation: he was a school head, an assistant mayor responsible for education at the city hall and vice-president of the region. But behind that unblemished image lay a very different truth. It was he who lured Gilles Artigues, whom he called a “friend”, into the trap by inviting him on January 5th 2015 to have a massage from a male escort in a hotel room during a joint trip to Paris.
Samy Kéfi-Jérôme had carefully hidden a camera in a corner of the room. A year and a half later, it was also he who first showed the sex-tape to Gilles Artigues, ordering him to follow his political line. At the time the assistant mayor spoke of the video as a “leash” and a “political insurance policy”.
'Without scruples'
Now working in the restaurant trade, the 46-year-old former assistant mayor quit his various posts a few weeks after the story broke and left Saint-Étienne. He later began to express regret and named the mayor as the man who had ordered the operation.
Gaël Perdriau's former chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri, followed a similar path. He, too, was convicted by the court. Former political strongman at city hall and the metropolitan authority, and the man on whom the mayor had relied to win power and retain it since 2014, Gauttieri was sentenced to four years in jail, two of them suspended.
Since the start of the affair two different sides to Pierre Gauttieri have become apparent. The first was that of a man of rare brutality and unshakeable strength. “If me going to the slammer brings you down because you pass for a washed-up old poof, I don't have a problem with that,” he told Gilles Artigues in 2017, during a meeting that the latter recorded in secret as he braced himself for the worst - he had planned to take his own life and leave proof of his ordeal to his family.
In another recording, in 2018, the chief of staff threatened the deputy mayor – with the mayor present – that he would spread the sex-tape among parents of pupils at the schools attended by Artigues's children. “I don't think your children will get over it,” he insisted, describing himself as being “without scruples”.
The second side of Pierre Gauttieri emerged a year after the affair began. Temporarily jailed in the summer of 2023 after not meeting his bail payment in time, and shunned by his family, Pierre Gauttieri admitted his part in the plot and then suddenly opened up. On December 18th 2023, he spoke out in the investigating judges’ chambers, saying he no longer wanted to serve as the mayor’s “fall guy”.
At the trial itself, the 57-year-old Pierre Gauttieri seemed physically diminished - he did not travel to Lyon for the verdict - jobless and without a lawyer. The Artigues family “forgave” him, while assistant prosecutor Audrey Quey highlighted the “journey” he had gone on during the case.
Among the four, only the mayor continued come what may to insist he had absolutely nothing to do with the affair, despite the many material clues that pointed to his role.
The four leaders of the associations through which the public funds used to pay Rossary-Lenglet had passed were all cleared of “breach of trust”. Like the prosecution, the court concluded in the end that they had known nothing of the final destination of the public money that had gone through their accounts.
The damages granted to the civil claimants in the case also indicate the seriousness of the affair. Gilles Artigues was awarded 200,000 euros in damages - this, too, with immediate effect - his wife 30,000 euros, and each of their four children 20,000 euros. Former mayor Michel Thiollière, who was also the target of a subsequently-abandoned plan to try to get compromising material on him, was awarded 10,000 euros, the anti-corruption association Anticor 5,000 euros, while the city of Saint-Étienne was granted 40,000 euros for harm suffered to its standing and good name. On top of this, 184,000 euros were ordered to be paid to cover the municipal legal assistance given to Gilles Artigues.
In 2014 Gaël Perdriau’s campaign slogan had been: “Let's bring about the future.” His own future now lies far from Saint-Étienne city hall.
- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter