Athina Onassis Roussel - Legal Entanglements

Legal Entanglements

Christina Onassis never trusted Thierry Roussel completely, which led the family to arrange for a Board of Administrators to have control over the family money until Athina came of age. The trustees selected by Christina to manage Athina's estate in the event of Christina's death were as follows: Stelio Papadimitriou, Paul Ioannidis, Apostolos Zabelas, Theodore Gabrielides and Thierry Roussel. The "four Greeks" (the four other than Thierry Roussel) have frequently been dubbed in the media as the "greybeards." During Athina's childhood and adolescence, all expenditures made on her behalf by her father (using money from the Onassis inheritance) had to be approved by the Board in advance (which led her father to threaten constantly to move back to Paris, France, with the family, where income taxes would cost the estate a "small fortune a year", as Roussel put it). In 1999, a Vaduz court ordered the transfer of management of her inheritance from the five trustees selected by her mother to the KPMG Fides auditing firm in Lucerne.

On Athina's 18th birthday, she was of legal age to take control of half of her inheritance. Despite massive media interest from across the world, there were a minimum of formalities in Switzerland and the day passed almost like every other one as half the Onassis fortune and a part of the Livanos shipping inheritance, handed down via Athina's mother's will, passed to Athina. It was an event for which she had been prepared by her family for a long time and the 18-year-old heiress knew what would happen at one minute past midnight and what was expected of her.

On her 21st birthday, she did not take control of the other half or become the president of the Onassis Foundation, with assets in excess of US$2.1 billion. The Foundation's Board has made public that they have no interest in turning over control to Athina, who they say has no real qualifications to take on the role. Moreover, the Onassis Foundation officially denies that she ever was an heir to the estate of Aristotle Onassis; they acknowledge her only as heiress to her mother's fortune.

The Board has arranged to modify the Statutes of the Foundation so that Athina would not become head of the Foundation automatically upon turning 21. Her lawyers contested the validity of the changes and unsuccessfully fought for her stated desire to be President of the Foundation as of January 2006, when she turned 21.

Stelios Papadimitriou, president of the foundation, has remarked: "We are not going to turn the Onassis Foundation over to someone who has no connection with our culture, our religion, our language or our shared experiences, and who never went to college or worked a day in her life. She can do whatever she wants with what she inherited from her mother, but not with Onassis's legacy to the Greek people in memory of, Alexander Onassis." Under the terms of her grandfather's will, his fortune was divided in two, with half going to set up a Vaduz-based charitable foundation in memory of his only son, Alexander, who was killed in a plane crash.