- Albert Spaggiari
Albert Spaggiari (
December 14 ,1932 –June 8 ,1989 ), nicknamed Bert, was a French criminal chiefly known as the organizer of a break-in into aSociété Générale bank inNice , France in 1976. He was involved with the pro French Algeria movement OAS and also maintained links with the ChileanDINA .Earlier life
Spaggiari was born in
Laragne-Montéglin in theHautes-Alpes département . He grew up inHyères , where his mother had a lingerie store.Spaggiari is reported to have committed his first robbery in order to offer a diamond to a girlfriend. He would later enter the
French Foreign Legion (maybe in order to escape justice) and fought as aparatrooper during the Indochina War.During the Algerian War he worked for the OAS, a clandestine anti-de Gaulle and anti-decolonisation organization. Despite the fact that he was probably more a sympathizer than a real activist, Spaggiari was later sentenced to some years in prison for his OAS activities. During his imprisonment at the Santé Spaggiari wrote his first autobiographic book "Faut pas rire avec les barbares" ("One needn't laugh with the barbarians"). He then supported the nationalist candidacy of
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour in theFrench presidential election, 1956 .In 1976 he was the owner of a photographic studio in Nice, living in a house in the hills over Nice named "Les Oies Sauvages". But he apparently quickly became bored with his law-abiding middle-class life. Later accounts described him as cavalier and stylish.
Heist
When Spaggiari heard that the sewers were close to the vault of the Société Générale bank, he began to plan a break-in into the bank. Eventually he decided to do it by digging into the
bank vault from below. Spaggiari rented a box in the bank vault for himself and then put a loudalarm clock in the vault. He set the clock to ring at night in order to check the possible existence of any acoustic or seismic detection gear. In fact, there were no alarms protecting the vault because it was considered utterly impregnable; the door wall was extremely thick and there was no obvious way to access the other walls.Spaggiari contacted professional gangsters from
Marseille . Although it has never been verified, he probably got support fromGaëtano Zampa to build a team that was completed by some of his OAS friends, including would-be-assassin of Charles De GaulleGaby Anglade andcon artist Jean Kay . His men made their way into thesewer s and began a two-month effort to dig an eight meter long tunnel from the sewer to under the vault. Spaggiari had taken many precautions during this long dig. His men worked long hours continuously drilling. He told his men not to drink coffee nor alcohol and get at least 10 hours of sleep every shift to avoid any danger to the mission.On
July 16 1976 , during a long weekend due toBastille Day festivities, Spaggiari's gang broke into the vault itself. They opened 400safe deposit box es and stole an estimated 60million francs worth ofmoney , securities and valuables.According to some accounts, Spaggiari brought his men a meal including wine and
pâté , and reportedly they sat down in the vault for a picnic lunch, after welding the vault door shut from the inside. The gang spent hours picking through the various safety deposit boxes. Spaggiari and his men found nude photos of some wealthy and famous locals, which they attached to the walls of the vault to be seen by all who entered. Before they left onJuly 20 , they left this message on the walls of the vault: sans haine, sans violence et sans arme ("without hatred, without violence, without weapons"). This was Spaggiari's message to the world, and he obviously considered himself to be something more than a common thief.Capture and escape
At first the French
police were baffled. However, by the end of October, they were closing in, and on a tip from a former girlfriend, they arrested one of the errant thieves. After a lengthy interrogation he turned over the entire gang, including Spaggiari. When Spaggiari, who had been accompanying the mayor of NiceJacques Médecin in the Far East as a photographer, returned to Nice, he was arrested at the airport.Spaggiari chose
Jacques Peyrat , a veteran of the French Legion who belonged at the time to the National Front, as his defence attorney. Spaggiari first denied his involvement in the break-in, then acknowledged it but claimed that he was working to fund a secret political organization named the "Catena" (Italian for Chain) that seems to have existed only in his fantasy.During his case hearings, Spaggiari devised an escape plan. He made a fictitious document which he claimed as evidence. He made the document coded so it had to be deciphered by the judge. He distracted judge Richard Bouaziz with this document and then jumped out of a window, landed safely on a parked car and escaped on a waiting
motorcycle . Some reports claimed that the owner of the car later received a 5000 francscheque in the mail for the damage to his roof.Left-wing papers later claimed that Spaggiari had received help from his political friends, in particular from ex-OAS militants close to the mayor of Nice,
Jacques Médecin . The accusations forced Médecin to go through a second round of voting at the local elections of 1977.In 1995,
Jacques Peyrat accusedChristian Estrosi actual French minister and former motorcycle champion to have been Spaggiari's driver. But later Estrosi proved that this day he was challenging the Daytona's motorcycle racing.Life in hiding
The escape of Spaggiari would last until the end of his life. He was sentenced
in absentia to alife in prison . Reportedly he underwentplastic surgery and spent probably most of the rest of his life in Argentina. However, it is reported that Spaggiari came several times clandestinely to France, visiting his mother or his wife "Audi". For the publishing of his ultimate book "Le journal d'une truffe" he gave an interview toBernard Pivot for the TV program "Apostrophes" that was reportedly recorded in France.According to a
CIA document declassified in 2000 and publicized by theNational Security Archive ,Michael Townley , theDINA international agent responsible for the murder ofOrlando Letelier , a member ofSalvador Allende 's government, in Washington DC, 1976, was in contact with Spaggiari. Information contained in the document suggests that Spaggiari (code name "Daniel") conducted operations on behalf of DINA. [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch02-01.htm ] [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch02-05.htm ] [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/ch02-06.htm ]Spaggiari was said to have died under "mysterious circumstances". The press reported that his body was found by his mother in front of her home on
June 10 ,1989 , having been carried back to France by unknown friends. However it now seems well established that his wife "Audi" was with him when he died of throatcancer on June 8, 1989, in a country house inPiedmont . She drove the corpse from Piedmont to Hyères and lied to the police as it is a criminal offence to carry a cadaver.Remains of the loot from the heist has never been found.
Spaggiari's role as the brains behind the Société Générale break-in has also been questioned. Most members of the gang have declared that his influence has been over-estimated and that, far from having directed the "gang of the sewermen", Spaggiari was simply one of its members.
Works
*"Faut pas rire avec les barbares" (1977)
*"Les égouts du paradis" (1978)
*"Le journal d'une truffe" (1983)Popular culture
French authors René-Louis Maurice and Jean-Claude Simoën wrote the book "Cinq Milliards au bout de l'égout" (1977) about Spaggiari's bank heist in Nice. Their work was translated in 1978 by the British author
Ken Follett as "The Heist of the Century" (also published as "The Gentleman of 16 July" and "Under the Streets of Nice"). To the outrage of Ken Follett some publishers brought it out as a new Ken Follett book, while it was in fact little more than a rushed through translation. [ [http://www.ken-follett.com/bibliography/heist.html Ken Follett | Bibliography | The Heist ] ]Three movies were produced which were also based on the Nice bank robbery:
* "Les égouts du paradis", a French movie directed byJosé Giovanni (1979).
* "The Great Riviera Bank Robbery" (also known "Dirty Money" and "Sewers of Gold"), a British movie directed by Francis Megahy (1979).
* "Sans arme, ni haine, ni violence", a French movie directed byJean-Paul Rouve (2008)ee also
*
Organisation de l'armée secrète References
External links
*imdb title|0080186|Les égouts du paradis
* " [ [http://spaggiari.blogspot.com/ Albert Spaggiari ] ] " page dealing with multimedia and detailed articles (site is in French)
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