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| - A prominent French television producer who is being investigated for child sexual assault said Saturday he was the victim of a plot by his nephew who had demanded money from him. "I am not a predator!" Gerard Louvin told the newspaper Nice-Matin, in his first public comments on the affair -- the latest sexual assault case to rock the intellectual elite in France. French prosecutors said Tuesday they had opened an investigation into accusations of rape and complicity in raping minors by Louvin, who has produced some of the most popular shows on French television over the last decades, and his husband Daniel Moyne. The probe was initially opened in January after a complaint was filed by Louvin's nephew, named as Olivier A., over alleged assault when he was aged 15. Two other separate complaints also alleging sexual assault by the couple have now been merged into this inquiry, prosecutors said. "The only complaint that targets me directly comes from my nephew, who has demanded 700,000 euros for having not seen what did not exist," Louvin told the paper. "All this is a cabal. My sister is behind all this, she wrote some horrors to me." He alleged that since he had adopted a boy it meant that for his sister and his nephew "there was suddenly another heir." The complaint by Olivier A., now aged 48, accuses Louvin of encouraging rape carried out by his husband Moyne. Louvin and Moyne's lawyers have denied the claims, saying that they would file a complaint for "blackmail" and that the couple were victims of homophobia. The allegations come after France's intellectual elite was rocked last month by an accusation that a top political expert and commentator, Olivier Duhamel, sexually abused his stepson. Prosecutors opened an investigation into Duhamel after the claims made in a new book by his stepdaughter Camille Kouchner, the sister of the alleged victim. Duhamel has denied the allegations but stepped down from his various academic posts. uh/ybl/lch/wdb/spm
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