Jacques Médecin (1928-1998) was a
French politician. A member of the
Gaullist RPR, he served as mayor of the city of
Nice from 1966 to 1990. He was a son of the long-serving mayor of Nice,
Jean Médecin. Criticized for proposals that were seen as racist, he argued that he shared almost "99% of the views" of the
Front national far right party, and called
Jean-Marie Le Pen an "old friend" . He was challenged at the first turn of the 1977 municipal elections, because of alleged links with former members of the
OAS terrorist group which would have had helped
Albert Spaggiari to escape. In the 1980s he was accused of corruption following an exposé of judicial and police corruption in Nice by the British novelist,
Graham Greene. As accusations of political corruption against him grew through the decade, he fled France in 1990. He was finally arrested in
Uruguay in 1993 and was extradited back to France in 1994. There, he was convicted of several counts of corruption and associated crimes and sentenced to prison.
He died in Punta del Este, Uruguay following cardiac arrest in November 1998. He had returned to Uruguay following his release from prison.
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