Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Cassandri has admitted he took part in the robbery but denies money-laundering charges 
 
 A French gangster who wrote a book saying he masterminded the country's "heist of the century" has gone on trial 42 years later. 
 
 It was carried out by a gang who spent months tunnelling from the sewers in Nice into a bank vault in 1976. 
 
 Jacques Cassandri, now 74, published his account eight years ago, when he could no longer be tried for robbery. 
 
 But he is being prosecuted for money-laundering - for which there is no statute of limitations in France. 
 
 The robbery at the Société Générale branch in Nice on the French Riviera has inspired several books and a major film. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The 1976 robbery is the stuff of legend in France 
 
 The gang used rubber rafts in the sewers, installing hundreds of metres of electrical cables for lighting, to reach the place where they dug an 8m (26ft) tunnel to the bank's basement. 
 
 They broke into the vault during a weekend, went through almost 200 safety boxes and made off with 46 million francs - the equivalent of 29 million euros ($36m; £26m). 
 
 Pen name 
 
 Only one man was ever arrested for the robbery, Albert Spaggiari. He escaped in 1977, as he was about to be tried, and died in exile 12 years later. 
 
 While on the run, Spaggiari wrote a book confirming police claims that he was the mastermind. 
 
 But in 2010 when Mr Cassandri published his book under a pen name, investigators concluded that the author was in fact the leader of the gang. 
 
 They quickly identified Mr Cassandri - a well-known gangster in Marseille. He admitted to police that he took part in the robbery but has denied the money-laundering charges. 
 
 "This book is a novel, and a novel is not a piece of evidence," a defence lawyer told AFP news agency. 
 
 Mr Cassandri says he only made the equivalent of 2m euros from the burglary and quickly spent it. 
 
 Prosecutors argue that he has continued to lead a lavish lifestyle on the proceeds. ||||| A “retired” Marseille gangster stood trial on Monday for being the brains behind the most notorious bank robbery in modern French history after spilling the beans about his alleged leading role in a recent book. 
 
 In an apparent act of hubris, Jacques Cassandri, 73, had boasted about being the mastermind of the Heist of the Century – a £24 million robbery by a gang who burrowed into Société Générale bank in central Nice, southern France, from the sewers. 
 
 In The Truth about the Nice Heist, Cassandri – writing under the pseudonym Amigo – said he was tired of living in the shadow of the man assumed to have run the Ocean's Eleven-style bank job, Albert Spaggiari, who he claims in fact only played a minor role. 
 
 On 16 July 1976, after two months of drilling through the underlying sewers, a commando of 13 robbers finally broke into the vaults of the heavily-guarded bank. 
 
 They spent the next six days clearing 317 coffers of gold ingots, jewellery and cash amounting to 50 million francs – today worth around £24 million – before making their getaway just as the rising sewage waters began to flood the bank. ||||| This article is over 10 months old 
 
 Jacques Cassandri in court more than 40 years after raid on Société Générale bank in Nice 
 
 Suspected mastermind on trial for France's 'heist of the century' 
 
 The suspected mastermind of France’s “heist of the century” has gone on trial more than 40 years after robbers tunnelled through sewers to snatch the equivalent of €29m from a bank vault. 
 
 The 1976 robbery at a Société Générale branch in the southern city of Nice confounded the police for decades. 
 
 Only one person was ever charged with the crime, with most of the gang disappearing. The loot – 46m francs – was never found. 
 
 But in 2010 the case took an unexpected twist when a career criminal wrote a book in which he portrayed himself as the heist’s mastermind. 
 
 
 
 He used a pen name, but investigators quickly concluded the writer was Jacques Cassandri, a key mafia figure in Marseille, where he went on trial on Monday. 
 
 He had assumed he was safe because the crime was too old to be prosecuted, but Cassandri is being charged with laundering the millions from the heist – a crime for which France has no statute of limitations. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Worried customers queue outside the Société Générale bank in Nice after the raid in July 1976. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Police found the manuscript on Cassandri’s computer, and his children later confessed that their father had often bragged about the robbery. 
 
 He eventually admitted to orchestrating the intricately planned job that involved at least six people and 30 tanks of acetylene to fuel the welding torches used to cut into safes and safety deposit boxes. 
 
 Cassandri said he got only the equivalent of about €2m, which he quickly spent. 
 
 But an investigating magistrate was not convinced, saying Cassandri was broke in 1976 but now sits atop an empire that includes several businesses and real estate. 
 
 “This book is a novel, and a novel is not a piece of evidence,” one of Cassandri’s lawyers has argued. 
 
 Until his book appeared in 2010, police had assumed the Nice heist was the work of Albert Spaggiari, who was arrested a few months afterwards. 
 
 The team spent weeks preparing the robbery, using rubber rafts in the sewers to access the spot where they dug their eight-metre (26-foot) tunnel, installing hundreds of metres of electrical cables to provide lights. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police watch as an acetylene tank is pulled from the sewers of Nice days after the bank was robbed by a gang. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Racy pictures of women were hung along the walls of the tunnel, which were reinforced with concrete, and police later found remains of meals, wine bottles and packs of cigarettes. 
 
 Breaking in on a weekend, they took their time going through nearly 200 safe deposit boxes in the vault as well as the bank’s five-tonne safe. 
 
 Cash, jewelry and gold bars were discovered missing when employees finally realised what had happened on Monday morning – the robbers had welded the door to the vault shut. 
 
 Inside they left a message on the wall: “Sans arme, sans violence et sans haine” (Without weapons, without violence and without hate). 
 
 A report at the time told of hundreds of panicky clients mobbing the bank, desperate to know if their wealth was safe. 
 
 Spaggiari escaped a few months after his arrest by jumping out of a window at the Marseille courthouse where an accomplice was waiting on a motorcycle. 
 
 He was never caught and eventually died of cancer in 1989.
– Prosecutors in France say he was the mastermind behind the "heist of the century"—though "mastermind" might not be the best word for somebody who writes a book implicating himself in an unsolved crime. Jacques Cassandri, a 74-year-old organized crime figure in Marseille, is on trial for the audacious 1976 robbery of a branch of Societe Generale in Nice, AFP reports. In the heist, a gang spent months tunneling from the sewers into a bank vault, which they raided over a weekend. On the Monday, bank staff found the vault welded shut and a message on a wall inside: "Sans arme, sans violence, et sans haine"—"Without weapons, without violence, and without hate." The haul of 29 million francs, around $10.4 million at the exchange rate of the time, was never recovered. Cassandri—who was convicted in the 1970s of involvement with the "French Connection" drug ring—was quickly identified by police eight years ago after he wrote a book under a pen name portraying himself as the heist's mastermind, the BBC reports. He said he was tired of another robber, Albert Spaggiari, getting credit for organizing the heist. Police found the manuscript on his computer and he eventually confessed to orchestrating the robbery, possibly unaware that while the statute of limitations had expired for that crime, he could still be charged with money laundering. Cassandri's fortune appears to "draw its hidden origin from the Nice heist bounty," prosecutors said in court Monday, per the Telegraph. Cassandri's lawyer argued that the novel "is not a source of proof."