By Ingrid Melander

PARIS (Reuters) – Bernard Tapie is a French politician-turned-tycoon. He bought a soccer team, was jailed and tried his hand at politics.

    He died on Sunday aged 78, having suffered from stomach cancer in the final years of his life.

Tapie, the son a plumber was born in Paris on 23 September 1943. In 1986, he bought Olympique de Marseille soccer club and Adidas (OTC) in 1990.

The club was in serious decline and he revived it to win the Champions League title, as well as five French titles.

The solidly built man, with dark, thick hair, entered politics at the same time. He brought a little bit of charm to the gray-suited technocrats in French politics while also touching a chord with the young and working classes.

    He grabbed national attention in a no-punches-pulled debate with the then-leader of the far-right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 1989. The same year, he was elected as a lawmaker, which marked the start of a climb towards Francois Mitterrand’s cabinet. He served as minister for urban affairs in 1992-1993.

However, things began unravelling around the mid-1990s as business woes and judicial inquiries started to pile up.

“I used to be rich but I’m no more. “I was trendy, but I’m not anymore.” I have resigned as president of the European Championship team. I ran businesses, I no longer do so,” he told Le Figaro daily in September 1995.

“Many French have more to be proud of than me.”

1995 sentence for Tapie’s match-fixing at Olympique de Marseille.

He sold Adidas two years prior to this, which was the beginning of one of the most complicated and long-running judicial sagas that he had been involved in.

The Adidas case had been a long one, with many investigations and decisions, including some surprising twists that were in his favor. Tapie had claimed https://www.reuters.com/article/cdc-tapie-idUSL1142249220080711 that when former French state bank Credit Lyonnais had sold the stake on his behalf, the bank had made a gain at his expense.

He also attempted acting as an actor in a Claude Lelouch film in 1996. This was just after he was declared bankrupt. He also became a newspaper proprietor in 2012 by purchasing local papers from southern France.

Tapie’s pop recordings in the 1960s included a 1985 single called “Reussir Sa Vie”.

Tapie founded the La Vie Claire bicycle team. While he was involved, the team’s stars Bernard Hinault (and Greg LeMond) won the Tour de France 1985 and 1986.

You’ve done everything you can to make it a success, such as being a minister or singer. He told Le Monde that he has been “spoiled rotten” by his life in an interview from 2017.