Agnelli Legacy, 74.8 Million Seized for John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann

Seizures for 74.8 million euros were ordered by the judiciary in Turin as part of the investigation that revolves around Gianni Agnelli’s inheritance. The provision, signed by a investigating judge of the court at the request of the Subalpine prosecutor’s office, is against the brothers John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann, the family accountant Gianluca Ferrero, the Swiss notary Urs Von Grunigen. The financial-economic police unit of the Guardia di Finanza was in charge of the case.
The case concerns the assets and inheritance of Marella Caracciolo, the lawyer’s widow, who died at the age of 92 in February 2019. The prosecutors’ theory is that at least since 2010 the woman had lived permanently in Italy, but that a fictitious residence was built for her in Switzerland to hide her assets from the Italian tax authorities. The alleged crimes are fraudulent declaration and fraud against the State.
The amount of 74.8 million was quantified by following two paths. The first is an alleged evasion of Irpef for approximately 42.8 million on the life annuity that Marella Caracciolo periodically received (approximately 29 million between 2015 and 2019) and on capital income (approximately 116 million) deriving from financial activities of trusts based in the Bahamas. The second is the product of analyses on the estate, which is estimated at approximately 800 million euros: there are the shares of a Luxembourg investment fund, the assets of a Luxembourg company, the post-mortem divisions among heirs of paintings, works of art and jewels considered to be of considerable value. In this case, also taking into account the failure to pay the inheritance tax in Italy, we are talking about evaded taxes for approximately 32 million.
The legal team of the Elkann brothers points out that “the seizure carried out in recent days is a procedural step that does not entail any assessment of the responsibility of our clients. Moreover, it does not satisfy the requirements set by law because, among other things, there has never been any risk of dispersion of the assets”. The lawyers state that “the circumstances of the facts as reconstructed by the Prosecutor’s Office are not acceptable, and we remain convinced that we can demonstrate the non-involvement of our clients in the facts charged”.
The investigation began with a complaint filed in Turin on December 23, 2022 by Margherita Agnelli, daughter of Marella and mother of John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann. The woman has been fighting a tough and varied legal battle over her father’s inheritance and its aftermath for decades. In the background remains control of Dicembre, the family safe on which all the group’s companies depend. So far Margherita has not been successful. Now, however, the investigations conducted by the prosecutors of the Subalpine region seem to have supported at least one of her theses: Marella’s Swiss residence was fictitious.
During the search carried out last spring, a real ‘manual’ was recovered in the office of the accountant Ferrero, without date and signature, on all the measures to be taken to make it appear that the woman lived in Switzerland. Not only that. In recent weeks, investigators have reconstructed the activities of a ‘family office’ beyond the border, a small group of collaborators who, on the instructions of the family, took care of all the tasks in Switzerland, from collecting mail to operations on current accounts. But the defense rejects this interpretation of the facts. “Marella Caracciolo – they say – had been a resident in Switzerland since the early Seventies, well before the Elkann brothers were born, and the desire to live there never waned throughout her life”