Millions of francs, gold bars and stolen jewelry. In the vault of the Société Générale of Nice, reputed to be impenetrable, only a provocative slogan remains on one of the walls, written in chalk: “Neither weapons, nor violence and without hatred. » A sentence which will remain as the trace of the spectacular burglary committed on the weekend of July 17 and 18, 1976, after several months of careful preparation carried out with the greatest discretion.
Behind this “heist of the century” is Albert Spaggiari, a 43-year-old Franco-Italian. A former soldier, he presents himself as the brains of this operation, the project of which he developed for several years. The idea came to him after a conversation with a friend who was an employee of the Société Générale who told him where the safe room was located. He also tells her that she doesn’t have any alarm system.
Two years before taking action, Albert Spaggiari rented one of the safes in which he placed an alarm clock programmed to sound at night and thus checked that no alert was triggered. At the same time, he begins to explore the sewers of Nice to locate an access to the bank.
After recruiting around fifteen accomplices, he launched underground work in May 1976. For nearly three months, he and his team took advantage of the night to enter the sewers and dig an eight-meter tunnel leading them to the vault. On July 16, the last wall gave way.
On the run in the United States
The next two days were spent looting several hundred chests, opened using crowbars and a blowtorch. The criminals seized loot estimated at 46 million francs in banknotes (the equivalent of 35 million euros today) and several gold bars kept in the bank’s reserve. On Monday morning, the employees noticed that it was impossible for them to open the door to the safe room; the robbers welded it together from the inside.
At the time the theft was discovered by investigators, Albert Spaggiari had already left France for the United States. A few days later, however, he presented himself on his own to the CIA, to whom he offered his services while boasting of being the author of the heist. The American authorities transmitted the information to the French police who, for their part, managed to obtain confessions from two of his accomplices arrested while trying to resell bullion.
The investigations make it possible to retrace the career of Albert Spaggiari. A former paratrooper during the Indochina War, he also belonged to the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), a small, far-right clandestine group opposed to the independence of Algeria. The police also discovered, in his second home called “The Wild Geese”, a portrait of Adolf Hitler.
Albert Spaggiari was finally arrested at Nice airport on his return from a trip to Japan, on October 27, 1976. He initially denied the facts, then ended up agreeing to deliver his version to the deputy director of the judicial police, Honoré Gévaudan. Despite his confession, the thief cannot imagine his life in detention and begins to prepare his escape.
Questioning his role
On March 10, 1977, while he was being questioned in the investigating judge’s office at the Nice courthouse, he took advantage of a moment of inattention. Under the pretext of wanting to show a detail on a document, he bypasses the magistrate’s office, rushes towards a window and jumps from the second floor. He lands on the roof of a car parked in the street before being picked up by an accomplice who is waiting for him on a motorcycle. The two men flee.
Then begins a twelve-year run. Under the name Romain Clément, he stayed mainly in South America. In Argentina, he underwent cosmetic surgery to complicate his identification. Despite everything, he occasionally returned to France, under his false identity, even published a book under the provocative title Les Égouts du paradis, and gave several interviews, notably to the show Apostrophes by Bernard Pivot.
Albert Spaggiari died in June 1989 from cancer, hiding on a farm in Belluno, Italy. His relatives discreetly repatriated his body to Hyères, where his mother lived. The author of the heist of the century will therefore have escaped prison for most of his life, just like several of his accomplices, who will never be found. As for the loot, it has never been located either.
Nearly half a century after the events, the exact role of Albert Spaggiari continues to spark debate. Some journalists and former members of the organized crime community believe that he would not have been the real organizer of the heist, but rather a pawn among others. His taste for media coverage would actually have made it possible to divert attention from the real brains of the operation. A hypothesis which still maintains the mystery surrounding one of the most famous heists in French criminal history.
