Frost and snow in Thun, in the heart of the Swiss Oberland. And it was even colder in the circuit courtroom, where for the first time in years, a mother and daughter found themselves torn apart over a heated argument over money. She is Margherita Agnelli, now Baroness De Pahlen after being the daughter of a Barrister, first in the line of succession to the Fiat empire: she left that line many years ago receiving a huge severance pay.
He is his eldest son John Elkann, the son of his first marriage, who thanks to that severance package has surpassed him – along with his brothers Ginevra and Lapo – in conquering their grandfather’s legacy: the official one and the one hidden for decades in treasures scattered around the world.
They haven’t spoken to each other in years, and — based on what little has emerged from the closed-door hearing — they didn’t speak to each other yesterday either. Margherita arrived first, entering the courtroom with her lawyer; five minutes later his son arrived.
During the lunch break, the same scene: the two of them went out and came back without passing each other. Also in the courtroom was Ginevra, third daughter Margherita; Lapo, the pimp, goes missing; however both are marginal figures in the ongoing war as John, now president of Stellantis, has led the conflict alongside his mother from the start. Who, as a side effect, was the only one of the three brothers to emerge from the judicial investigation, his one year in prison for defrauding the State was converted into ten months of social service. Soft landing, thanks to maximum compensation of 184 million to the Revenue Agency.
Once the criminal side is closed, what remains at the center of attention is the dispute over inheritance, where eight or perhaps nine zeros are at stake, and the trial that brings mother and son back together under one roof for a few hours is a new episode. Which revolves around the central question of this whole issue: where exactly did Marella Agnelli, the widow of a lawyer since 2003, spend her last years until her death sixteen years later? In Switzerland, between one chalet and another, or in Turin, at Villa Frescot? If Donna Marella were in Italy, the agreement by which Margherita relinquished her inheritance was null and void, and her appetite for the remaining treasures became irresistible. So the crucial struggle for John is to prove that his grandmother spent time across the border. In the fraud trial against the State, it was discovered that to prove this thesis Elkann and his professionals falsified all kinds of documents. When he negotiated the sentence, John made it clear: it was not an admission of guilt. But he was the first to know that his path was now uphill.
Yesterday, before a Swiss judge, Elkann’s lawyers tried to draw up a new card: the Confederation’s right to demonstrate the “effectiveness of the residence” was not the counting of days spent in the territory, but the “center of interests”, and Marella Agnelli’s center of interests was not in the hills of Turin but in the mountains of Switzerland. “We have proven it,” they said. On the other hand, from Margherita’s group, they answered that the “center of interest” was a vague concept, and what was important was a permanent residence.
This would go on for a long time, between Swiss and Italian courts, between one twist and another: like the reappearance, after more than thirty years, of the will in which Gianni Agnelli bequeathed 25 percent of Dicembre, the family vault, to his eldest son Edoardo, who committed suicide in December 2000. If the will had not disappeared, the whole story would have been different.
