New Orleans – The mayor of New Orleans, Latoya Cantrell, was charged on Friday in what the prosecutors called a program of several years to hide a romantic relationship with his bodyguard, who is accused of being paid as if he worked even when they met alone in apartments and went to vineyards for a wine tasting.
Cantrell faces accusations of conspiracy, fraud and obstruction, less than five months before leaving functions due to mandate limits. The first woman mayor of New Orleans, 300, was elected twice, but now becomes the first mayor of the city to be charged during her mandate.
“Public corruption has been paralyzed to us for years and years,” said acting American lawyer Michael Simpson, referring to the notorious history of Louisiana. “And it’s extremely important.”
Cantrell’s bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, was already facing accusations of wire fraud and making false declarations. He pleaded not guilty. A great jury delivered an indictment of 18 chiefs on Friday who added Cantrell to the case.
They are accused of exchanging encrypted messages via WhatsApp to avoid detection, then deleted the conversations. The mayor and Vappie said that their relationship was strictly professional, but the indictment described it as “personal and intimate”.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a telephone message or an email from the Associated Press by asking for comments on the accusations that Cadrell has not sent a message on its official social media flow since July 15, when it declared that the city underwent a historic decrease in crime.
In an exchange of WhatsApp, said the indictment, Vappie remembered the accompaniment of cantrell in Scotland in October 2021, saying that it was “where it all started”.
Cantrell and Vappie used WhatsApp for more than 15,000 messages, including efforts to harass a citizen, delete evidence, make false statements to FBI agents, “and finally to commit a perjury before a great federal jury,” said Simpson.
They met in an apartment while Vappie claimed to be in service, and she managed to attend 14 trips, said Simpson. The trips, he added, were described by her as moments “when they were really alone”.
New Orleans taxpayers have paid more than $ 70,000 for vapal travel, the prosecutor said.
The authorities cited a September 2022 meeting on Martha’s Vineyard, a trip that Cantrell made instead of attending a conference in Miami. Vappie’s trip to the island was covered by the city to attend a separate conference. “The moments when we are really (traveling) is what spoils me the most,” wrote the mayor this month.
Simpson said Cantrell had lied to an affidavit that she activated a function on her phone which automatically deleted the messages in 2021 when it really did not act this feature before December 2022, a month after the media began to speculate on the driving of the pair.
When a private citizen took photos of them by dinner together and drinking wine, Cantrell submitted a police report and asked for a ban prescription, Simpson said.
Vappie retired from the police service in 2024.
Cantrell and her remaining allies said that she had been unjustly targeted as a black woman and held at a different level from male officials, her executive powers at the Saboté City Hall. Simpson, however, tightened the assertions that everything that played a role in the investigation.
“It is not relevant whether it is romance or whether it is a woman,” he told journalists, adding that allegations were “an incredible betrayal of people’s confidence in their own government”.
Cantrell, a democrat, clashed with the members of the municipal council during a second turbulent term and survived a recall effort in 2022.
“It’s a sad day for the inhabitants of New Orleans,” said Monet Brignac, spokesperson for the president of the municipal council, JP Morrell, to the news of the indictment.
In 2014, the former mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for corruption, money laundering, fraud and tax crimes. The accusations arose from his two mayor’s mandates from 2002 to 2010. He obtained a supervised release of prison in 2020 during the Pandemic COVID-19.
As she went around her last months in power, Cantrell has alienated former confideurs and supporters, and her civic profile fell. According to his first achievements were overshadowed by self-inflicted injuries and bitter quarrels with a hostile municipal council, political observers say. The role of the mayor was weakened following modifications approved by voters at the City Charter intended to curb his authority.
Earlier this year, Cantrell said she was faced with “very disrespectful, insulting, in some unimaginable” treatment. Her husband, lawyer Jason Cantrell, died in 2023.
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Hollingsworth reported Mission, Kansas. Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.
