Bernard Tapie dies: The “indestructible” one is dead

He was a singer, actor, minister and became a scandalous legend as a dazzling self-made millionaire and football patron: Bernard Tapie. Now the French entrepreneur has died at the age of 78.

It was certainly no coincidence that Bernard Tapie recorded a song in 1985 called “réussir sa vie” – “Success in Life”. Because all the working-class son from the north of Paris aspired to was to make his life a success. Tapi – virile, seductive, self-confident – was not only a singer and actor, but also an entrepreneur, self-made millionaire, football president, minister – and: indestructible: “There is only one means that leads to success: that is the energy” he last conjured in one of his now rare public appearances.

A legend in Marseille

Thinking big was also his motto when he took over the football club Olympique Marseille in the early 1990s. With Chutzpah, with trainer Franz Beckenbauer and with strong support from the sporting goods manufacturer Adidas, Tapie put the club, which had already been declared dead, on the road to success and won the European Cup against AC Milan in May 1993.

In Marseille they have not forgotten that to this day. Even when it became known that Tapie had paid bribes to Valenciennes players en route to the final and that Olympique Marseille was subsequently relegated to the second division, fans stood by him.

Several times in court

The talented jack-of-all-trades tricked, distorted and lied if it only helped him to assert his interests. The entrepreneur was tried several times and convicted several times. Most recently, a decade-long legal dispute was extended: In the so-called Adidas affair, he was charged with fraud and evasion of public funds.

A complicated story: when Tapie became Minister of Urban Development in 1992, he had to sell his shares in Adidas at a bargain price to a bank, which immediately resold the shares – at double the price. And much to the annoyance of Tapie. “They ruined me, humiliated me and forced me to file for bankruptcy in order to then reap a fat profit at my expense,” said Tapie at the time.

Committed fighter against right-wing extremists

The businessman therefore initially successfully demanded compensation, which is why the future French Minister of Economics Christine Lagarde also came under pressure. In 2019 the court acquitted him. But an appointment process followed, which the phoenix – as his friends called him – will no longer live to see.

Not least because of his political commitment against right-wing extremism, well-known politicians found words of appreciation on the day of his death. President Emmanuel Macron praised Tapies for “the ambition, energy and enthusiasm” on Twitter. The president wrote that he could move mountains and fetch the moon from the sky.