A brutal war between rival members of Italy’s most famous industrial dynasty has intensified as a high-ranking member comes under investigation following accusations of tax evasion by his own mother.
Members of the Agnelli family, who have been compared to the Kennedys, have fought bitterly over the assets left to them by former patriarch Gianni Agnelli, the richest man in modern Italian history, who died in 2003 at the age of 81.
Agnelli, whose funeral was believed to have been attended by 100,000 people, appointed his grandson John Elkann, the eldest son of his mother, Margherita Agnelli, as his successor.
Shortly after the death of her father, who turned Fiat into a national superpower, at one point controlling 4.4% of Italy’s GDP, Margherita agreed to give up her stake in the empire in exchange for €1 .2 billion.
But she later changed her mind and tried to reclaim the assets she had signed over, which today are believed to be worth around €4.8 billion.
Agnelli, who was 81 when he died, named his grandson John Elkann (pictured) as his successor.
Shortly after her father’s death, Margherita Agnelli (pictured) agreed to give up her stake in the empire in exchange for €1.2 billion
The Agnelli family – Adults from left to right: Marella Caracciolo, Gianni Agnelli, Eduardo Agnelli and Margherita Agnelli
In the latest in a long series of swipes at her son, who controls companies such as Ferrari, she has accused him of helping her own mother, Marella Caracciolo, Gianni Agnelli’s widow, commit tax evasion.
In 2004, Marella gave John and his two siblings control of Dicembre, the family business that has controlling interests in much of the auto empire they now control.
But after her death in 2019, cases regarding control of the empire began to pile up.
Margherita accused her mother, who was an official resident of Switzerland at the time and therefore controlled assets under Swiss law, of having lived in Italy in the years before her death.
Her lawyers argued that this would make the legacy illegal under Italian law.
Gigi Moncalvo, an author who has written about the family, told the Times: ‘Margherita has called her mother’s drivers and staff as witnesses to prove she was in Italy, pointing out that she had spent the past two years suffered from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. her life and never left Turin.’
‘If she can prove this, the legacy can be rejected, allowing her to obtain half of the assets left by her mother, worth around 4.8 billion euros, including the interests in Dicembre.
The Agnelli family has been embroiled in a bitter feud since Gianni’s death
Italian magistrates are investigating John Elkann on suspicion of complicity in his grandmother’s alleged tax evasion
“That would give her control of the company.”
“There are also the gold bars stashed in Switzerland that the Agnellis were paid by the Italian government for supplying weapons and vehicles during the two world wars,” he added.
Italian magistrates have been investigating whether Marella avoided taxes in Italy by claiming to be a Swiss resident, and are investigating John Elkann on suspicion of complicity in her alleged crimes.
The mother and son, who are believed not to have spoken since 2004, are also fighting over the fate of the family’s art collection, which includes pieces by Picasso, Monet and Francis Bacon.
Lawyers representing Agnelli, who had five more children with her second husband, said she was simply “trying to ensure fair treatment for all her children, according to the law.”
Elkann’s lawyers, meanwhile, said they would continue to fight Margherita in court: “There is a mother, Margherita Agnelli, who has been prosecuting her own parents and three of her children in court for 20 years.”
They added that she “ignored the clearly expressed wishes of Gianni Agnelli and Marella Caracciolo, as well as the agreements she herself had signed.”
Honorary Chairman of Fiat Gianni Agnelli, the stylish Italian industrialist who transformed Fiat into a global superpower
The Agnelli family isn’t the only Italian car dynasty at war with itself.
Earlier this month it was revealed that an Italian beautician had hired a private investigator to collect the saliva from a straw used by an heiress to the Lamborghini fortune to wage a bitter defamation battle in Italy.
Flavia Borzone, 35, is being sued for defamation by the son of the legendary hypercar manufacturer’s founder after she publicly claimed he had slept with her mother and was her real father.
Borzone, a beautician from Naples, says that Tonino Lamborghini, the son of Ferrucio Lamborghini, met her mother, the Neapolitan opera singer Rosalba Colosimo, in the late 1980s when she was 17.
Borzone said Lamborghini stopped and offered Colosimo a ride while she waited for a bus in Milan.
The couple is said to have had a relationship and in 1988 Borzone was born.
But after making her claims public on TV shows and tabloids in 2019, she has faced an uphill battle to prove that she is indeed related to the Lamborghini family.