The armed peace maintained by the Agnelli has once again been blown up and in recent days the thunder box has been revealed again in this powerful lineage, the closest thing the Italian Republic has to a royal family. The war is open again. At the center of their battle, which has lasted two decades and is seasoned with power games, intricate disputes in the courts of Italy and abroad, ambitions, reproaches and crossed accusations, is, as it has been for years, the distribution of the enormous inheritance of the patriarch Gianni Agnelli, the playboy vain man who reinvented Fiat, who died in 2003.
The new chapter, which corroborates that the wounds were never healed, begins with a complaint from Margherita Agnelli, daughter of the aristocrat, which affects her son, John Elkann, heir to the family empire, and which is related to alleged tax irregularities in the case of the inheritance of grandmother Marella Caracciolo, who died in 2019. No further details of the accusation have emerged, it is only known that the Prosecutor's Office is investigating Elkann, but the fuse has been lit once again between the members of a of the most powerful industrial dynasties in the history of Italy.
The eternal war of succession of the Agnelli has become a kind of dallas transalpina. Margherita, practically excluded from family affairs since Gianni's death, has been confronted for two decades with some of her children: John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann, born from her first marriage to the writer Alain Elkann. . Among other things, she demands that the distribution of her estate also take into account her five other children, whom she had with her second husband, the Russian Count Sergius of Pahlen, who have traditionally been kept in anonymity.
Following the new complaint, John Elkann's lawyers have rejected any type of tax irregularity and have defended that their client has paid the taxes that correspond to him. In a note sent to this newspaper they have also criticized the judicial initiatives that Margherita Agnelli has undertaken over the years. “There is a mother who has been persecuting, in all judicial instances, for more than 20 years, even making extensive publicity in the press, her parents and three of her children, who have no other responsibility than having been the only ones to have watched over for the care, assistance and dedication of his grandmother until her last day,” the note reads.
Margherita Agnelli's lawyer, in response, alleges that his client is only defending herself. “On the same day of the death of Marella Caracciolo, John Elkann, with his two brothers [Lapo y Ginevra]opened legal proceedings in Switzerland against his own mother, even before any dispute had arisen over his grandmother's inheritance, without any will having even been published on that date,” he explains in a note sent to this newspaper.
In 2003, when Avvocato, the nickname by which everyone knew Gianni Agnelli, died, a fierce struggle for inheritance broke out within the family. After a year of arduous negotiations, Margherita Agnelli signed an agreement by which she renounced the shares of the family company, which at that time was looking into the abyss and today has become a prosperous colossus. In exchange, she would receive a large sum of money that was around 1.3 billion euros. When Margherita gave up the shares, they passed from her mother, Marella, to her firstborn, John Elkann, the universal heir to the empire, who is currently president and CEO of the family business group. Most of the properties also passed into her name. Later, in 2021, Margherita challenged that agreement because she considered that the figure she received had been inadequate, too low taking into account the value that those shares that she refused had later reached.
John Elkann now accuses his mother of trying to take advantage of the good economic performance of the family group, today a prosperous colossus that, among other brands, includes Ferrari and Fiat, which was in poor times when Margherita signed the agreement. She reproaches him for ignoring the future of the company, only to later claim the part of it ―which she had renounced― when the wind once again blew in favor of the car company. “It is worth highlighting that Margherita Agnelli, evidently considering the fate of the business activities of her son and his family of origin to be critical and uncertain, decided in 2004 to monetize her part, and then try to paradoxically benefit from a new increase in assets derived from the success of the Fiat's relaunch plan, to which she had not contributed at all, but of which, as a mother, she should be happy and proud, since her son had been the main architect,” point out the three Elkann lawyers. “Margherita challenges everything, even going so far as to breach the signed agreements to not recognize the will of her parents,” they add.
Sources close to Margherita Agnelli tell EL PAÍS that “it is not that Margherita signed the agreements and the next day began to challenge what she signed,” but rather that three years after the agreement, in 2007, “she discovered that the mother had a fortune in Switzerland of hundreds of millions of euros that did not appear in the official accounts and that could be part of the father's former assets that had not been included in the distribution. At that time, she filed a lawsuit in court to clarify the entire assets of Gianni Agnelli's estate, but it was dismissed.
The Elkann brothers' lawyers highlight that so far “all of Margherita Agnelli's legal initiatives have not been recognized in any court, neither criminal nor civil.” They point out that the mere fact of being investigated by justice, like John Elkann today, does not imply any responsibility and does not even contemplate a formal accusation. And they take the opportunity to remember that in the past, always in the context of the battle for inheritance, Margherita was also investigated, “along with her then Swiss lawyer, for an extortion attempt” reported by another lawyer who complained of “having been subject to strong pressure to induce him to make statements favorable to her in the case of the succession, threatening otherwise with a complaint for tax evasion.” The Elkann lawyers indicate that that case was dismissed.
Margherita Agnelli's entourage explains to this newspaper that “the judicial route is not the most appropriate to resolve family issues”, but, “Margherita has been forced to proceed along that path, because she was the first to receive a court summons” , they insist. And they point out that for Margherita it is important that all of her children are treated equally in the distribution of the inheritance. “The other children [de apellido Pahlen] They should not have been set aside, there is no evidence that Mrs. Marella has specified anything similar in her will,” they point out. The Elkann brothers reveal, through their lawyers, that they suffer “grief and pain” over their mother's accusations.
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