Mayor of Saint Etienne Gaël Perdriau (center) arrives with his lawyer Jean-Félix Luciani (left) at Lyon's courthouse to attend his trial for a sex-tape blackmail case, on September 22, 2025. OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE / AFP
The mayor of the French city of Saint-Etienne went on trial on Monday, September 22, accused of ordering a video to be made of his deputy with a male prostitute. Gaël Perdriau, who denies blackmail charges, sat through a closed hearing near Gilles Artigues, his former number two, when what has become known as "the sex-tape of Saint-Etienne" was shown.
Artigues, a Roman Catholic who had spoken against gay marriage, was secretly filmed in a Paris hotel with a male prostitute. Perdriau and three of his staff and deputies face charges of blackmail, criminal conspiracy and diverting public funds. Another of the mayor's former deputies, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme, admitted to the court that he hid the camera in the hotel room.
He said it was ordered by Pierre Gauttieri, who was then the mayor's chief of staff. "The order was to trap Gilles Artigues over his repressed homosexuality," Kéfi-Jérôme said.
"I have no evidence that the mayor was aware of these things, but if Pierre Gauttieri makes such a commitment, I deduce that he must have had the approval" of Perdriau, added Kéfi-Jérôme. Kéfi-Jérôme's former companion, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet, who acknowledged his own political ambitions, openly accused the mayor, saying there was a "contract."
