Eric de Montgolfier saw the series and dives into his memories of the legal face-to-face with the businessman

It’s a breathtaking 25-minute scene, behind closed doors of the modest Valenciennes prosecutor’s office. The former minister and powerful president of OM Bernard Tapie shows up unexpectedly, at night, to meet Eric de Montgolfier, the man he thinks he will convince to drop the charges in the VA match-fixing affair. -OM. Obviously, everything is not going to go as planned and an intense verbal battle then begins between the businessman and the prosecutor Eric de Montgolfier. From the last episode of the series “Tapie”, on Netflix, this scene, entirely fictional, traces the meeting, although very real, of the two personalities. Thirty years later – and two years after the death of Bernard Tapie – the retired magistrate watched the series, which he describes as “pleasant work“Even if he didn’t recognize himself.”in the sneaky side of the prosecutor“.

franceinfo: What was it like to see yourself embodied in a fiction?

Nothing, because maybe it was me, but it obviously wasn’t just me. I heard words that I had spoken – “You could have been a constellation, you were a meteor” during the indictment at the hearing – or that others besides me had delivered. I found it to be pleasant work, but often, I said to myself: no, that’s not me. Some consider my portrait quite flattering, but it doesn’t quite resemble what I remember. Where I don’t recognize myself is in the devious side of this prosecutor.

How did this meeting with Bernard Tapie take place in 1993?

It was not at all improvised. Bernard Tapie asked me, I accepted. In the series, the prosecutor pretends not to recognize him and acts naive, like a game of cat and mouse that I couldn’t see myself playing. During the conversation, I had a strategy that was perhaps a little finer-grained and did not consist of giving the person concerned, even though he was not officially involved in the case, all the arguments I could. have against him. I had no proof but I had elements. Like the fact that money had been discovered that very afternoon in the garden of the aunt of a player from Valenciennes. There you go, Bernard Tapie wanted to see me. He began by posing as an important, influential figure, leaving the Elysée, which explained his delay. He came to explain football to me, to talk to me about the fragility of players, but I had nothing to say to him and certainly not to lecture him. This is something that bothered me a little about the series. I don’t think it’s very worthy of a prosecutor to make fun of someone he might one day prosecute.

What effect did Bernard Tapie have on you at the time?

He was true to his character as seen in his shows. A kind of go-getter, a bit of an adventurer, a bit of a bully. Frankly, I have always had a form of esteem for this multi-faceted character with quite numerous talents, it must be said, even if for some, they prompted my interventions. But he wasn’t unfriendly, he wasn’t irritating, and I had the best role. You just had to listen. It was sometimes amusing when the person who came to find you tried to convince you that what you said made no sense, because that’s what he came to do. Or when he tells you: “Ah, a great prosecutor like you in such a small court!“It’s difficult, even if you lack humility, not to laugh. I took it as an admission of weakness.

You have said in the past that “anyone other than Bernard Tapie would not have been sentenced to prison for the same acts”. Do you still think so?

That’s what I believe. But it’s not because it was Bernard Tapie, I explained, it’s because he was a former minister. At the hearing, I told him that he had also dragged another former minister into this debacle, Jacques Mellick [condamné pour faux témoignage dans l’affaire VA-OM]. What he represented because he had been a member of the government prohibited him from the behavior that I was accusing him of. We must be exemplary. I believe that the mistake of politicians is not understanding that they must be absolutely exemplary. I often think of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, while he had to undergo a search, which, I understand, is not very pleasant, said words that disfigured the Republic. When you have made the choice to serve the general interest, you have no right to fall short of what is expected of you. And that also applies to magistrates.