PARIS, Oct 4 — Bernard Tapie, the French business magnate, actor and politician whose swashbuckling career earned him millions of fans despite a series of legal convictions, died aged 78 on Sunday after a four-year fight with stomach cancer.
“He’s what you used to call a prole who succeeded in climbing the entire social ladder at a time when working your way up wasn’t so easy,” said Ludovic, a 23-year-old fan. A large black-and-white portrait of Tapie was erected outside the OM’s Velodrome stadium in Marseille on Sunday, with fans gathering at the makeshift memorial.
But Tapie’s empire collapsed spectacularly in the late 1990s, beginning with the match-fixing trial that saw him serve jail time.
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