Bernard Tapie, a former French minister and scandal-plagued tycoon who once owned Adidas, was assaulted along with his wife during a midnight break-in at their house, according to the investigators. Four men broke into the couple’s home in Combs-la-Ville, near Paris, around 00:30 AM Sunday (2230 GMT Saturday), beat them up, and bound them up with electrical cords before fleeing with their loot. Dominique Tapie was able to break out and make her way to a neighbor’s house, where she dialled 911. She was admitted to the hospital for a check-up, after being slightly injured by multiple blows to the chest. Rodolphe Tapie, Tapie’s grandson, assured AFP that his grandmother is doing well.
The burglars “pulled her by the hair because they needed to know where the loot was,” according to Guy Geoffroy, the mayor of Combs-La-Ville. “Of course, there was no treasure, and the fact that they didn’t find one just exacerbated the violence.” Tapie, who is 78 years old, was hit in the head with a club, according to prosecutor Beatrice Angelelli, but he refused to be rushed to the hospital.
Rodolphe Tapie said, “My grandfather declined to be carried down.” “He’s exhausted and broken. When he was struck with a club, he was seated in a chair.” The burglars obtained entry to Tapie’s house, the “Moulin de Breuil,” from a first-floor opening, undetected by the guards. According to a source close to the probe, they took off with two watches, including a Rolex, as well as earrings, bracelets, and a ring.
Tapie was a Socialist minister who rose from humble origins to create a sports and media empire, but he later got into legal issues. During the high-rolling years of financial deregulation in France, he earned a fortune by taking over bankrupt firms in corporate seizures, robbing them of their money, and selling them for a profit. He flaunted his fortune by purchasing a 72-meter yacht and the Olympique de Marseille football club, which claimed the French championship, when he was their owner.
In France’s elite football league, he has even been accused of match-fixing. In 1992, he served as Minister of Urban Affairs in Francois Mitterrand’s cabinet. Tapie was convicted of graft, tax evasion, and misappropriation of company funds in a number of cases, and was sentenced to five months in jail, and also, was denied the right to run in every French election. Following his release from jail in 1997, Tapie expanded his horizons by dabbling in performing, singing, and hosting radio and television shows.
He later became a publishing mogul in 2012, taking over the southern French daily La Provence and other publications. Tapie has been dogged by a bribery lawsuit for decades, involving a hugely contested settlement worth 400 million euros ($470 million at current rates) paid to him by a government arbitration court, the severity of which sent shockwaves across France. When he sold his share in the Adidas sports apparel business in 1993 to state-run French bank Credit Lyonnais, which was found to have undervalued the sportswear brand, the panel found he was a victim of fraud.
Christine Lagarde, the then-finance minister, is now the president of the European Central Bank. She was charged with “negligence.” The way Lagarde handled the case ignited speculation that her former employer, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom Tapie had endorsed for president in 2007, had a soft spot for the businessman, accusations that Sarkozy has categorically refuted.
