Albert Spaggiari
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Albert Spaggiari (December 14, 1932 – June 8, 1989), nicknamed Bert by his friends, was a French criminal chiefly known as the organizer of a break-in into a Société Générale bank in Nice, France in 1976. He was involved with the pro French Algeria movement OAS and also worked for the Chilean DINA, participating in operation Condor.
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[edit] Earlier life
Spaggiari was born in Laragne-Montéglin in the Hautes-Alpes département. He grew up in Hyères, 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 a paratrooper 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 Spaggiari wrote his first autobiographic book Faut pas rire avec les barbares ("One needn't laugh with the barbarians").
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. When living in Nice he used to wear sunglasses most of the time and smoke large cigars, a style that made him resemble the singer Jacques Dutronc.
[edit] 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 loud alarm 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 from Gaëtano Zampa to build a team that was completed by some of his OAS friends, including would-be-assassin of Charles De Gaulle Gaby Anglade and con artist Jean Kay. His men made their way into the sewers 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 to Bastille Day festivities, Spaggiari's gang broke into the vault itself. They opened 400 safe deposit boxes and stole an estimated 60 million francs worth of money, 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, spending 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 on July 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.
[edit] 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 Nice Jacques 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, 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 francs cheque in the mail for the damage to his hood.
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 accused Christian Estrosi actual french minister and former motorcycle champion to have been the Spaggiari's driver. But later Estrosi proved that this day he was challenging the Daytona's motorcycle racing.
[edit] Life in hiding
The escape of Spaggiari would last until the end of his life. He was sentenced in absentia to a life in prison. Reportedly he underwent plastic 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 to Bernard Pivot for the TV program Apostrophes that was reportedly recorded in France.
According to a CIA document declassified in 2000 and publicized by the National Security Archive, Michael Townley, the DINA international agent responsible for the murder of Orlando Letelier, a member of Salvador 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. [1] [2] [3]
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 throat cancer on June 8, 1989, in a country house in Piedmont. 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.
[edit] Writings by Albert Spaggiari
- (1977) Faut pas rire avec les barbares
- (1978) Les égouts du paradis
- (1983) Le journal d'une truffe
[edit] 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. [4]
In 1979, two movies were produced which were also based on the Nice bank heist:
- Les égouts du paradis, a French movie directed by José Giovanni.
- The Great Riviera Bank Robbery, a British movie directed by Francis Megahy.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Les égouts du paradis IMDb page dealing with the movie
- [5] page dealing with multimedia and detailed articles (site is in FRENCH)
