Ex-Adidas owner tied up & beaten during burglary

Former French minister and scandal-ridden tycoon Bernard Tapie, once the owner of Adidas, was attacked along with his wife during a midnight burglary of their home, police said on Sunday. The couple were asleep when four men broke into the house in Combs-la-Ville near Paris around 00:30 AM Sunday (2230 GMT Saturday), beat them and tied them up with electrical cords before making off with their loot.

Dominique Tapie managed to free herself and made her way to a neighbour's home, from where she called the police. Slightly injured from several blows to the face, she was taken to hospital for a check-up. “She is doing well,” Tapie's grandson Rodolphe Tapie told AFP.

During the burglary the perpetrators "pulled her by the hair because they wanted to know where the treasure was", the mayor of Combs-La-Ville, Guy Geoffroy, told AFP. "But of course there was no treasure, and the fact that they didn't find one made the violence only worse.” Tapie himself, who is 78, received a blow to the head with a club, prosecutor Beatrice Angelelli told AFP, but he declined to be taken into medical care.