Paris: Scandal-ridden tycoon and former owner of Adidas Bernard Tapie and his wife were in the wee hours of Sunday beaten and tied up during a burglary at their home in Paris. The couple was asleep when four people broke into their house in Combs-la-Ville near Paris around 00:30 AM local time (2230 GMT Saturday) on Sunday, brutally attacked them and tied them with electrical cords before making off with their loot, the police said.
Dominique Tapie, slightly injured, was able to free herself and rush to a neighbour’s home to alert the police. She was taken to the hospital.
Meanwhile, reports said former French minister Bernard Tapie, who received a blow to his head, declined to be taken into medical care. There was no immediate information about what goods the perpetrators took and what the loot is worth.
An investigation is on to nab the culprits and the police are treating Sunday’s incident as a violent robbery and kidnapping.
Tapie is a former Socialist minister who rose from humble beginnings to build a sporting and media empire. He was briefly the minister for urban affairs in Francois Mitterrand’s government in 1992.
However, he was later engulfed in a string of legal challenges.
At the beginning of his career, Tapie made a fortune in his career and was known to flaunt his wealth. He took over multiple failing companies and owned a 72-metre yacht and a football club. However, a single fraud case has dogged Tapie for over a decade with a hugely controversial settlement worth 400 million euros awarded to him by a French government arbitration panel, the size of which sent shockwaves through France.
He has also been under suspicion of match-fixing in France’s top football league.
With Agency inputs