Bernard Tapie, football commentator, working class hero, film actor, television executive, former tycoon and government minister, returned to the Elysée Palace last month but not to visit his political soulmate, Président Nicolas Sarkozy, who was ‘unavoidably detained’ elsewhere.
Instead it was to have an uncomfortable interview with François Pérol, who runs economic affairs, and who is under pressure to prevent Tapie from receiving a 45 million Euros share of the proceeds of a huge lawsuit against the liquidators of his former sports company Adidas. Two days earlier the finance commission of the National Assembly, the equivalent of a UK House of Commons Select Committee, had given Tapie a grilling about a substantial nest egg derived from the business, allegedly not disclosed to its creditors.
The knives remain out for Tapie because he is blamed indirectly for helping to bring down, long before the present international financial crisis, perhaps the most famous of French banks, Crédit Lyonnais. In 1992 Tapie was Minister for Urban Affairs in the Mitterand government, having made his reputation as the rescuer of bankrupt businesses. Unable to pay the interest on the huge sum, 1.6 billion French Francs, he had borrowed to buy Adidas, Tapie persuaded Crédit Lyonnais to sell the business on his behalf. The bank however converted the debt into equity, contrary to existing French banking practice, and claimed that they had rescued the firm, leaving Tapie with nothing. He was made bankrupt, sued by several organisations, and later served nearly seven months in La Santé prison in Paris, having been awarded an 18-month sentence for fixing football matches in favour of Marseille AFC.
Meanwhile Crédit Lyonnais, the biggest bank in the world back in 1900, itself became insolvent in 1993, its speculative property deals encouraged by politicians eventually costing the taxpayer 16 billion Euros. Arson was strongly suspected when in 1996 a huge fire at the bank’s headquarters destroyed most of its financial records.
The arbitration tribunal that has just decided the case against the liquidators was strongly critical of the way the bank had purported to be representing Tapie when it was heavily involved with the would-be purchasers. They criticized the ‘brutal’ way the bank tried to foreclose on his house in the centre of Paris. The property in the rue des Saint-Pères, famous for the police raid organised by the anti-corruption judge Eva Joly that made a lot of noise but found very little, will finally be sold by Tapie himself. He is moving to a grand house in Switzerland on Lake Léman, near Prangins, at a cost of some 12 million Euros. No one in France however, believes they have heard the last of him.
From our October 2008 e-newsletter
