Bernard Tapie - Legal Difficulties

Legal Difficulties

In 1993, the same year that Olympique de Marseille won the Champions League, he was accused of fixing the match between his club and minor club Valenciennes; the motivation seemed to be that, in this way, he could save his best players for important matches and not waste their energy. His club was stripped of its French league championship, though not of the Champions League title, and later suffered a forced relegation to the second division because of financial irregularities widely blamed on Tapie. In 1994, Tapie was put under criminal investigation for complicity of corruption and subornation of witnesses. After a high profile case against public prosecutor Éric de Montgolfier, he was sentenced in 1995 by the Court of Appeals of Douai to 2 years in prison, including 8 months non-suspended and 3 years of deprivation of his civic rights. He was incarcerated for about 6 months in 1997. He sold his boat Club Med 2 to Club Méditerranée.

Tapie was also prosecuted for tax fraud. On 30 September 2008, a French court ended a long legal battle between Tapie and the Crédit Lyonnais bank. Crédit Lyonnais had allegedly defrauded Tapie in 1993 and 1994 when it sold Adidas on his behalf to Robert Louis-Dreyfus, apparently by arranging a larger sale with Dreyfus without Tapie's knowledge. The court awarded 405 million euros to Tapie. This decision was partially overturned on 9 October 2006 by the Court of Cassation, the main court of last resort in France.

In the 2007 presidential election, he supported Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, despite having been a minister in a Socialist government, and being a member of the Radical Party of the Left (PRG). According to Le Canard enchaîné, this support was won by Sarkozy because of tax issues which he promised to resolve following his election.