PARIS. Bernard Tapie died at the age of 78 after a long illness. Businessman, politician, former patron of Olympique Marseille (from 86 to 94) and owner of Adidas from 1993 to 96, he was a very controversial and controversial figure in France. Parliamentary with the Socialist Party and minister of François Mitterrand, in 94 he also created his own party, Énergie Radicale, which lasted only a few months.
In 1995 he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment, one of which with parole, in connection with the crime of bribery and subornation of witnesses. The trial established that Olympique (who under his leadership won 4 consecutive championships) bought a one-to-zero victory over Valenciennes on May 20, 1993. Also in 93, his club won the Champions Cup by beating Milan in the final. . That was only the first sentence, then 18 months for tax fraud arrived in 1997 and again, in June 98, 3 years in prison and 5 years of ban from public office for falsification and embezzlement of company assets, always at the time of the OM. In 2010, however, after a trial of about twenty years, he was acquitted of bankruptcy charges in the investigation into the financial crash of his holding companies.
Tapie had been ill for a long time with cancer and was unable to attend the hearings of the trial in which he was accused of fraud in the Credit Lyonnais case last May. According to reports from the French press, which started from nothing, in 2016 he had an estimated fortune of 150 million euros.
Among the first messages of the political class, that of Prime Minister Jean Castex, who “bowed” to the memory of Tapie, a “fighter”, a “very busy man.” “The first image that comes to mind – said Castex to journalists on the sidelines of a meeting of the presidential party La République en Marche in Avignon, in the south – is that of the fighter, for his ideas, his convictions. He has always been very committed against the far right, but above all for some causes , for his football team, his city, even his business. In short, a very committed man, who gave everything and I believe that this has also been seen against the disease. He fought blow by blow, as a fighter as he is always was. I bow to his memory. ”