Bernard Tapie

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Bernard Tapie, 2012

Bernard Tapie ( pronunciation : [ bɛʁnaːʁ tapi ]; born January 26, 1943 in Paris ) is a French entrepreneur , politician and actor .

Entrepreneur

Beginnings and successes

Born in simple circumstances in Paris and raised in Le Bourget , he started selling television sets in 1963 after completing his military service in the 93 e régiment d'infanterie and started his own business in 1964. In 1977 he acquired the Duverger paper mill and sold it on for a profit two years later. In 1979 he founded the holding company Groupe Bernard Tapie in Paris . The business model was to buy and reorganize insolvent companies. He was later accused of pillaging the company. A conglomerate of various corporate holdings emerged (including Testut, Look, Terraillon, La Vie Claire, Wonder, Manufrance and, above all, Adidas ), which was largely financed by the then state-owned bank Crédit Lyonnais . The law firm of Didier Calmels took over the legal handling of many transactions , who gave Tapie access to high political officials, including the Minister of Justice. In the early 1990s, Groupe Bernard Tapie showed an annual profit of five billion francs .

bankruptcy

In the early 1990s, Tapie came under increasing criticism and with the collapse of Crédit Lyonnais in 1993, he also lost the support of his bank. In autumn 1994, Bernard Tapie declared his bankruptcy . In July 1996, as part of the Testut affair, he was sentenced to two years probation and a fine of 300,000 francs for breach of trust . At the end of 1996 he was again found guilty of bankruptcy offenses, embezzlement and bribery, particularly in the context of the OM-VA affair, and sentenced to eight months in prison, of which he served six months in 1997.

Adidas affair

In Germany, Tapie became known primarily through the purchase of the majority of shares in the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas in 1990. The later sale of this stake occupied the courts for over a decade: In 1994, Tapie commissioned Crédit Lyonnais to sell its shares, which the bank acquired itself for 2.085 billion francs and a few months later sold for almost double that amount to Robert Louis-Dreyfus . Tapie accused Crédit Lyonnais of cheating him and the other shareholders for the additional proceeds. In 2005, Tapie was awarded 135 million euros in damages. However, the judgment was overturned by the Paris Court of Cassation . Subsequent arbitration proceedings awarded Tapie final damages of 285 million euros in July 2008; there was ultimately a payment of 403 million euros (including interest) to Tapie.

The government's decision to settle the dispute through arbitration was politically controversial, and in June 2011 the French judiciary opened an investigation against, among others, then Minister for Economic Affairs, Christine Lagarde . In January 2013, as part of these investigations, house searches were carried out at Tapie and Stéphane Richard , CEO of France Telecom and then head of cabinet of Christine Lagarde, and in March 2013 at Lagarde himself. At the end of June 2013, a judicial investigation against Tapie with the Explanation of "a band-like organized fraud" opened, since concealed previous relationships between one of the arbitrators and Tapie had come to light. Tapie was acquitted on July 9, 2019.

Recent deals

In December 2012, Tapie and Philippe Hersant took over a number of southern French newspapers for 50 million euros, including La Provence , Nice-Matin and its offshoots Var-Matin and Corse-Matin , which were spun off from the over-indebted Groupe Hersant Média .

Politician

Bernard Tapie was active as a politician in the social liberal Radical Party . Under the socialist government of Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy , he was from April 2, 1992 to June 3, 1992 and from December 26, 1992 to March 29, 1993 French Minister for Urban Affairs (Ministre de la Ville) . In 1988 and again in March 1993 he was elected to the French National Assembly for the Bouches-du-Rhône department .

In 2007 and 2012, Tapie supported the election campaign of the conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy .

Sports

Bernard Tapie was a Formula 3 driver in the early 1960s ; after a serious accident, however, he gave up motorsport. In the mid-1980s, Tapie caused a sensation when it took over the French cycling team La Vie Claire . The team's payroll included names like Bernard Hinault , Greg LeMond , Steve Bauer , Andrew Hampsten and Jean-François Bernard . From 1983 to 1987, “La Vie Claire” became one of the most successful teams of the decade and achieved several important victories, including three successes in the Tour de France by LeMond and Hinault.

Bernard Tapie was a shareholder and president of the French football club Olympique Marseille from 1986 to 1994 . During this time the club was extremely successful. Olympique Marseille achieved five national titles in a row from 1989 to 1993, won the national cup in 1989 and won the UEFA Champions League in 1993 .

These successes were not only achieved through sport. Club president Tapie had paid bribes before the match against US Valenciennes and thus illegally contributed to the success of his team. The French championship was revoked from Olympique Marseille, the club was downgraded to the second division in 1994 and Tapie was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment in 1997 in the second instance.

entertainer

After his first unsuccessful attempts as a singer and entertainer in the 1960s and appearances as a television presenter in the late 1980s, Tapie began to work as an actor, musician, presenter and writer after his bankruptcy in 1996 because he was no longer able to do so was able to pursue his previous interests: he was personally bankrupt and therefore could not start a business, he was not allowed to hold political office, and he was banned from football. First he turned to film. He starred with Fabrice Luchini in Claude Lelouch's film Hommes, femmes, mode d'emploi (Men, Women: A Handbook) from 1996.

In 1998 he appeared in the song C'est beau la vie by the French artist Doc Gynéco .

Under the title Who is Bernard Tapie? was made in 2001 by the American filmmaker Marina Zenovich a documentary about therapy.

literature

Airy Routier: Le phénix: le retour de Bernard Tapie , Grasset, 2008, ISBN 9782246703396

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Airy Routier: Le phénix: Le retour de Bernard Tapie , Grasset, 2008, ISBN 9782246703396 , p. 178.
  2. ↑ spiegel.de July 9, 2019: acquittal for France's ex-minister Tapie in the Adidas affair
personal data
SURNAME Tapie, Bernard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician, actor and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris