Overview

• Judges played a 2017 audio in which Gaël Perdriau discusses releasing compromising images, while he told the court he was bluffing, conceding a threat but denying blackmail.
• The bench examined two exceptional €20,000 grants from the mayoral reserve in 2014 and 2015 that investigators say were routed through associations to pay the operation’s organizer.
• Former mayor Michel Thiollière testified as a civil party, described feeling constant nausea since 2022, and referenced seized audio about an abandoned plan to target him with a minor, for which Perdriau is not prosecuted.
• Perdriau and three former collaborators stand accused of using a secretly filmed hotel encounter to silence rival Gilles Artigues and of misusing public funds.
• The trial is scheduled to run until Monday with a decision likely placed under advisement, and Perdriau faces up to ten years in prison and possible ineligibility if convicted.