Bernard Tapie, French Tycoon, Actor and Politician, Dies at 78

PARIS — Bernard Tapie, a swaggering French businessman who lurched all through his life from wild success to humiliation, figuring out every little thing from excessive political workplace to the jail cell, died on Oct. 3 in Paris. He was 78.

The trigger was most cancers, in accordance with a press release by his spouse, Dominique Tapie. The announcement appeared in La Provence, a newspaper Mr. Tapie owned within the southern French port metropolis of Marseille, the place he was beloved due to the extraordinary success he introduced its soccer group, Olympique de Marseille, after he purchased it in 1986.

“He led a thousand lives,” President Emmanuel Macron mentioned in a message of condolence to the Tapie household, including that Mr. Tapie’s “ambition, power and enthusiasm have been an inspiration for generations of French individuals.”

The president’s reward of a person who was embroiled in authorized issues for a number of a long time and who went to jail for 5 months in 1997 for his function in a soccer match-fixing scandal was a measure of the fascination exerted by this someday pop singer, enterprise mogul, actor, sports activities impresario, TV star and left-wing authorities minister. Mr. Tapie was many issues however by no means lower than irrepressible.

His soccer group — OM, because it was identified — was a nothing membership in dire straits when Mr. Tapie took over, however by way of a mixture of acumen and braggadocio he guided it to victory within the 1993 Champions League, Europe’s most coveted membership competitors. No different French group had ever received it. The gamers, courted on his yacht or the non-public jet he piloted himself, dubbed him “le boss.” He was in every single place — on the pitch, within the dressing rooms — they usually cherished him.

It was typical of Mr. Tapie that inside two years of a triumph that politicians seized on as symbolizing “a successful France,” he was convicted of attempting to bribe a Valenciennes participant to throw a match. Sentenced to 2 years in jail, he served 165 days. OM followers by no means cared. “He’ll go away a fantastic void within the hearts of the individuals of Marseille,” the membership tweeted on his loss of life.

For Mr. Tapie, nothing was ever greater than a superable setback. He had the reward of the gab and soulful darkish eyes that in some way made all of the phrases that gushed from him extra credible. In a rustic the place energy tends to be concentrated among the many graduates of its elite faculties, Mr. Tapie, the loud rags-to-riches self-made man, held an everlasting attraction.

Born in 1943 right into a working-class household — his father was a milling machine operator and his mom a caregiver — he needed to battle his manner out of the town’s powerful northern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. The ebook he would write in 1986 was known as “Profitable” for a motive.

He began out as a singer — his singles included “I No Longer Consider in Women” and “Fast, a Drink” — and dabbled in motor racing solely to search out himself in a coma after a crash, earlier than turning to enterprise in 1967 with a small firm that bought televisions in japanese Paris.

A home home equipment enterprise adopted, then one thing known as “Coronary heart Help,” which was supposed to supply instantaneous assist to individuals with coronary heart issues by way of a transportable gadget that might summon an ambulance on the press of a button.

Mr. Tapie was convicted in 1981 of fraudulent promoting; the corporate had two ambulances, perhaps, when it declared it had 5.

About the identical time, he was ordered by a French courtroom to return 4 chateaus that he had acquired for a tune from the fallen, self-proclaimed emperor of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, by persuading him — falsely — that they have been to be seized by the French authorities.

Shifting at pace in his private {and professional} life — he had two youngsters by a quick first marriage — Mr. Tapie specialised in rescuing and reselling troubled firms, from battery to bicycle producers. He constructed a fortune. The summit of his enterprise profession got here in 1990 with the acquisition of Adidas, the sporting items firm.

As in lots of his enterprise adventures, nevertheless, Adidas would come to hang-out Mr. Tapie. A protracted authorized saga involving the corporate ensued, involving the sale of his majority stake to Credit score Lyonnais in 1992; a lawsuit he had introduced in opposition to the financial institution alleging that it had underpaid for the corporate; a cost to Mr. Tapie of $449 million awarded in 2008; and an order on attraction to repay that sum in 2017. The case remained unresolved at his loss of life.

If something, these judicial travails introduced Mr. Tapie sympathy, particularly after he was recognized with most cancers in 2017.

Along with his spouse, he’s survived by the 2 youngsters from his first marriage, Nathalie and Stéphane; two youngsters along with his spouse, Laurent and Sophie; 9 grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

Even unwell, Mr. Tapie continued to offer interviews. He all the time had a present for communication, greedy earlier than his time that within the trendy period it counted as a lot as something. Like former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, and later former President Donald J. Trump in the USA, he seized on tv to cement his notoriety. He had his personal tv present, known as “Ambitions,” within the mid-Eighties. Via it he did rather a lot to make phrases like “entrepreneurship” and “success” much less suspect in a France that’s all the time suspicious of the wealthy, self-made or not.

These presents drew him to President François Mitterrand, who requested to fulfill Mr. Tapie in 1987 and noticed in him a showman who may very well be an efficient communicator for the left, utilizing easy, uncooked language. A debate in 1989 between Mr. Tapie and the arduous proper anti-immigrant chief Jean-Marie Le Pen stays legendary for Mr. Tapie’s demolition of his opponent.

Addressing a gathering of Le Pen’s Nationwide Entrance occasion in 1992, Mr. Tapie, who had been elected to Parliament as a consultant from Marseille in 1989, postulated the concept of seizing immigrants, piling them into a ship and sinking the boat off the coast of France. There was wild applause, in accordance with an account by the author André Bercoff.

Mr. Tapie deadpanned: “I made no mistake about you. I simply spoke of a bloodbath, and also you applauded. Tomorrow, check out yourselves within the mirror when you shave or placed on make-up and simply throw up.”

Mr. Mitterrand made Mr. Tapie minister for city planning in 1992, however he needed to resign after 52 days on account of yet one more authorized drawback. The case was resolved in Mr. Tapie’s favor, and he returned to the federal government in 1993, however the defeat of the left that yr ended his ministerial profession.

There was nonetheless time for additional ventures, together with Mr. Tapie’s acquisition of the La Provence newspaper. His performing profession revived with a Paris theater efficiency in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. Near former President Nicolas Sarkozy, he turned a frequent customer to the Élysée Palace between 2007 and 2012. His opinions — on enterprise and the affairs of the world — have been wanted and reported on, even in his final years.

“For the French to like you once more, it suffices to get sick,” Mr. Tapie commented. The nationwide mourning and appreciable adulation at his loss of life appeared to show him proper.