Jacques Imbert

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Jacques Imbert (born December 30, 1929 in Toulouse - † November 11, 2019 ), also known as Jacky Le Mat , was one of the last great mafia bosses from the Marseille demi- world milieu .

Life

Jacky “Le Mat” Imbert looked back on a decade-long “career” as a criminal . In the 1960s he was considered a contract killer and since the 1970s as one of the key figures in the Marseilles underworld.

He got his nickname Jacky Le Mat ( Provencal for Jacky the Mad ) from the unusual way in which he persuaded defaulting debtors to pay when he was younger. If someone refused to pay, Imbert , who had a pilot's license , took him on his private plane . In the air, he switched off the engine, opened his companion's seat belt and the door on the copilot's side, and then dropped the aircraft in a dive until his fellow passenger turned in.

Although he was one of the great bosses of the Marseilles underworld for decades, he only spent a short time of his life in prisons and was able to go about his business largely unmolested. He himself later said: “The police always came to question me about things I had nothing to do with. I wasn't even confronted with the "crooked things" I had to deal with. "

As early as February 1st, 1977 he became a living legend . After some members of the gang around Tany Zampa had ambushed him in the parking lot of his residence in Cassis , they riddled him with a total of 22 bullets and thought him dead. But Imbert survived, although he lost his right eye in the assassination and almost his right arm since then was paralyzed. Thereby he acquired the nimbus of invincibility and from then on was considered a "cat with nine lives". He allied himself with Roland Cassone and Francis Vanverberghe and struck back. Between 1984 and 1986 the gang war, at the end of which the Zampa clan was destroyed, claimed more than 50 deaths.

In later years, he ran his business inconspicuously and unobtrusively from his refuge on the Frioul Islands .

Others

The attack on him on February 1, 1977 is also the model for the film 22 Bullets .

One of his friends was the actor Alain Delon .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ a b c d The Guardian: All over for Tomcat and Gremlin as new breed of gangster takes hold in Marseille , February 13, 2009 (English)
  3. ↑ a b c d Le Parisien: Jacky le Mat a fait ses armes avec Zampa , October 20, 2002 (French)
personal data
SURNAME Imbert, Jacques
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jacky Le Mat (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mafioso
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Toulouse , France
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 2019