A mayor who’s accused of blackmailing his own deputy mayor with a hidden camera recording of him with a male sex worker began his trial this week. The mayor claims he is innocent and that the accusations against him are part of a “campaign” against him by his political opponents.

At issue is an alleged plot to film Gilles Artigues, without his knowledge, with a male sex worker in a Paris hotel in 2015. Artigues was the deputy mayor of St. Etienne, a city in central France, at the time and belonged to the centrist Union of Democrats and Independents party. Artigues, who is Catholic and opposed marriage equality, says that the video was used to blackmail him for years to keep him obedient to St. Etienne Mayor Gaël Perdriau (Les Républicains, right-wing), despite the fact that he was Perdriau’s running mate in 2014. Perdriau is still the mayor of St. Etienne, but Artigues has since resigned.

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The trial started this week in Lyon. Mayor Perdriau — along with his chief of staff, Pierre Gauttieri; a former staffer in charge of education, Samy Kéfi-Jérôme; and Kéfi-Jérôme’s former boyfriend, Gilles Rossary-Lenglet — face charges in the case. Perdriau maintains his innocence.

Mayor Perdriau is accused of ordering that the sex video be made shortly after the municipal elections in 2014. The blackmail allegedly lasted until 2022, when the French news website Mediapart published the results of its months-long investigation of the plot.

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Artigues said that he was harassed by the mayor for years with that video and that the mayor’s staff threatened to send it to the parents of students in the school system. He said that the blackmail led him to suicidal ideation. He filed a criminal complaint shortly after the alleged plot was made public in 2022.

Kéfi-Jérôme, a former education staffer, was allegedly the person who hid the camera in a hotel room in Paris that Artigues was staying in.

According to Mediapart’s 2022 report, Kéfi-Jérôme allegedly lured Artigues into the room, saying that he had organized a special night for him. He was waiting there with the male sex worker, who he introduced to Artigues as an acquaintance. He acted like he knew the sex worker well, led the conversation, dimmed the lights, turned on some music, and had a glass of wine before leaving Artigues alone with the sex worker.

The sex worker, who has not been identified in the media, confirmed the series of events but said that he was not aware that there was a camera hidden in the room. He said he was paid 200 euros ($260) an hour, that the session lasted 90 minutes, and that Kéfi-Jérôme paid him in cash.

Kéfi-Jérôme then allegedly returned to St. Etienne with a 30-minute, 33-second video of Artigues, naked, getting an erotic massage from the sex worker, but no sexual intercourse occurred. He edited the video down to around two minutes and showed it to Artigues, and then began to blackmail him for years, influencing policy decisions that he made.

“Gaël [Perdriau] and Pierre [Gauttieri] ordered Samy [Kéfi-Jérôme] to show the short video,” Rossary-Lenglet, Kéfi-Jérôme’s then-boyfriend, told Mediapart in 2022. He claims to have come up with the entire plot and “directed” it from St. Etienne. “The message was clear: Gilles Artigues should not stray too far if he didn’t want the video to be made public.”

Kéfi-Jérôme resigned shortly after the alleged plot was made public in 2022, and he was later expelled from Les Républicains, his political party.

“The order was to trap Gilles Artigues with his repressed homosexuality,” Kéfi-Jérôme testified this week at the trial. He said that he had “no evidence” that the mayor was aware of what was going on, but that he had worked with Chief of Staff Gauttieri.

“If Pierre Gauttieri makes such a commitment, I deduce that he must have had the [mayor’s] approval,” Kéfi-Jérôme said.

Gauttieri, who denied his involvement in the plot when it first came to light in 2022, has since admitted to taking part in it and to considering using the same strategy against St. Etienne’s previous mayor, Michel Thiollière, in the 2000s.

Rossary-Lenglet testified this week that the mayor was aware of the plot and said there was even a “contract.” Rossary-Lenglet said that shortly after the 2014 elections, Perdriau and Gauttieri “said that they needed to control Gilles Artigues and his enormous group of centrists at the heart of his majority.”

Rossary-Lenglet, who is now separated from Kéfi-Jérôme, said that he came up with the entire scheme and that nonprofits he’s associated with were given 50,000 euros (about $59,000) in municipal funds that were then passed along to him as the salary for a job. He told Mediapart in 2022 that he was also motivated by his opposition to Artigues’ political positions, which included Artigues’ public opposition to ads that showed gay people, which Artigues argued should be removed for the “protection of minors.”

Kéfi-Jérôme, for his part, said that Gauttieri promised him support in the 2017 legislative elections.

Perdriau denies any involvement in the plot, but prosecutors say they have evidence of his knowledge of the video, including a time that he brought it up in a conversation that was being recorded without his knowledge.

Perdriau and the other defendants face charges of blackmail, conspiracy, and misuse of public funds. If he’s found guilty, Perdriau could face 10 years in jail as well as a disqualification from future elections.

Perdriau is up for reelection next year and said that he hopes to prove his innocence in this trial and rid himself of the “sword of Damocles” hanging over his head, according to the AFP.

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