VIDEO – Illness, debt and aggression: exclusive revelations of Dominique, widow of Bernard Tapie

Glory and shame. Dominique has experienced both extremes with Bernard Tapie, who died of cancer in October 2021. However, nothing doomed her to such a fate. At 19 and a half years old, the girl is engaged when she meets a businessman. “I worked in a commercial structure and did not know who the real boss was. And there I saw some special, very excited fanatic come in. You could already hear him come in five minutes before because he must have been at that time, Ferrari, which made a hell of a noise, so for me it’s too show-off”, she says in the video at the beginning of this article to Audrey Crespo-Mara, who dedicated her portrait of the week to her this Sunday in the Sept à Huit show.

In addition, he is married and has two children. And he’s not looking for a mistress, he already has several, as Dominique details in a book that will be published March 22. “Bernard, the fury of life” (Editions de l’Observatoire). “They were all devoted to him, and I, it was not like that at all. So I think it evoked empathy in him.” she suspects. As a result, each of them will leave their homes, never to leave each other.

But Dominic is determined to keep resisting him. “I waited 17 years before marrying her”she lets go, explaining that it was her only way to exist around him. Moreover, Bernard Tapie is extremely jealous, “very possessive”. “To watch, he could go find a person and punch him in the face at the limit”, she says. Supporting history: “He had a fit of jealousy when he was on the verge of death with his ER doctor who comes in at two in the morning. Poor guy, he was on morphine, so he was out of his mind. from the depths of his soul he said to him: ‘what are you doing here? Do you want my wife?” she recalls with a smile.

No matter what, his affection and tenderness will erase all the shortcomings of this husband. “old”. “I had my own place as a woman, I had to take care of my children, about the house, and he worked,” she says. And this guardian of the temple, “his rock”, as he called it, would be wise to raise four children: the two eldest by Bernard Tapie, Natalie and Stephane, and the two children they had together, Laurent and Sophie. This clan will face all the vicissitudes of fate. “When there was a prison term (the VA-OM match-fixing case landed Bernard Tapie six months in prison in 1997 for corruption and witness tampering, editor’s note) this helped us a lot. All against the whole world”Dominique says.

Tireless, excessive, indomitable, adjectives abound to qualify Bernard Tapie. Dominic sums it up like this: “He was as great as he was uninhabitable”. “Unsustainable, because it was difficult for him to contradict and go against what he decided. But at the same time, he was often right.”she is tempered, believing that she was not forgiven “his frankness”. Loving but critical, she warned him of his own demons: “I told him to try to format himself a bit and blend in, but he never wanted to, he didn’t hear it like that.”she explains, comparing it with “pedigreed, who cannot be trained”.

The epitome of the social success of the mid-1980s, “Nanard”, as he was then known, was appointed in 1993 as the city’s minister in the Beregovoy government. The event he experienced “dedication”also reveals Dominique. “He was so proud to be chosen to be able to represent his country. He was a Frenchman through and through, and for him the service to the state was the highest dedication”, she remembers. But how to live with this big mouth with easy vows? “We had big skirmishes, but he came back to pick me up. From time to time we had to call him to order,” she answers.

That’s why Dominique chose to stay, and above all because“she loved him” goes through many ordeals, legal, media, with her husband, and the most devastating of them, double cancer of the stomach and esophagus, diagnosed in a businessman in 2017. “He had resistance to pain, he wanted to control himself even with the disease. He never let go” she admits. But while her husband was the most weakened, in the months before his death they were beaten, bound and robbed by four men who broke into their home in Seine-et-Marne before fleeing with the jewels.

“We are in complete sleep, and I see a big all black silhouette that illuminates me. And I barely have time to react when the pillow suffocates me, and there, I think, my last hour has come (…) Then he starts to drag me, so I give him my bag, watch, jewelry that I had around, and then they drag me around the house in search of a non-existent safe.she recalls. This episode will further weaken Bernard Tapie, touched to the very heart by the fact that he “failed to fulfill his role as a protector”. And when he feels the approach of the end, he will turn to his wife with an unexpected request: to die together. “He takes my hand and says to me: ‘are we going together?’ He wanted us to go together.” she lets go. But she will object that he cannot ask her about it.

As soon as her husband died, Dominique was immediately faced with another torment, namely pending court cases. “He was on the front lines, but I was one”she exclaims, recognizing that she has inherited a colossal, unsustainable debt from “647 million something.” “It’s crazy when the original debt we touched on in the Crédit Lyonnais arbitration is pretty much repaid.” However, Bernard Tapie reassured him shortly before his disappearance: “They want my skin so they won’t leave you alone”

Caught in a hell of a tackle Dominique was forced to hastily move out of the private mansion on rue Saint-Pere in Paris, which the couple had owned for 35 years. All of his other assets were also seized. Her only resource is the pension of her husband’s deputy, divided by two, or 600 euros. Fortunately, she could count on the help of some of her friends, such as Jean-Louis Borloo, to support her. “It was he who resettled me, and others helped financially”she concludes, sure that she is a little angry with her husband.