French police on Sunday held a Russian activist and his girlfriend for questioning over sex videos released online that brought down French President Emmanuel Macron’s favored candidate for Paris mayor.
Pyotr Pavlensky has said he leaked the video that forced the centrist ruling party’s Benjamin Griveaux to bow out of the running for mayor in next month’s election.
The artist, who received asylum in France in 2017 after several radical protests in Russia, was arrested on Saturday in connection with a fight at a New Year’s party.
However, on Sunday, police turned their attention to the footage posted online this week showing a man masturbating, coupled with racy text messages sent to a woman.
The videos prompted Griveaux, a married father of three, to abruptly call off his mayoral campaign, a first in France, where politicians have in the past attempted to brush off sex scandals as private matters.
Pavlensky’s French girlfriend, Alexandra de Taddeo, believed to have been the recipient of the videos sent in 2018, has also been arrested on charges of invasion of privacy and publishing images of a sexual nature without consent.
Pavlensky, 35, and De Taddeo, 29, were both being questioned on Sunday at the headquarters of the criminal police in Paris.
On Friday, Pavlensky told reporters that he had posted the footage online to expose the “hypocrisy” of 42-year-old Griveaux and planned to post more material on a newly created “political porn platform.”
Griveaux “is someone who constantly brings up family values, who says he wants to be the mayor of families, and always cites his wife and children as an example, but he is doing the opposite,” Pavlensky told France’s Liberation newspaper.
Griveaux’s lawyer, Richard Malka, hit back on Sunday, accusing “pseudo artists” of giving “morality lessons.”
French media and politicians from across the spectrum have portrayed Griveaux, a former government spokesman, as the victim of a hatchet job.
“Everyone has the right to their secret garden,” French National Assembly Speaker Richard Ferrand told the Journal du Dimanche weekly, echoing a sentiment still widely held nine years after politicians’ morals came under scrutiny in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair.
Griveaux’s fall left Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) party scrambling to find a replacement candidate for Paris mayor a month before the vote.
French Minister of Health Agnes Buzyn on Sunday said she would run in Griveaux’s place.
“I’m going for it with the aim of winning,” said Buzyn, who has been leading France’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Macron hailed Buzyn’s “courageous decision” to throw her hat in the ring for the Paris job, his office said.
The president swiftly chose Olivier Veran, a lawmaker and doctor, to replace Buzyn at the health ministry.
Griveaux’s campaign had already been in trouble before the sex tape emerged, dragged down by a rebel candidacy from fellow Macron supporter and star mathematician Cedric Villani.
Recent surveys had placed the official LREM candidate third, behind Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo of the Socialist Party and conservative candidate Rachida Dati.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS