A notary from Turin had prepared the deed for the donation of 25% of the Dicembre shares to the scion. Which not even 24 hours later was found at the foot of a viaduct
For the lawyers of the Elkann brothers, John, Lapo and Ginevra, these are “procedural documents which have no legal value and which were considered completely irrelevant even in the same proceedings in which they were collected”, which are used “with the sole purpose of arousing sensationalism in public opinion”. But the new documents emerged yesterday from the endless legal dispute over the lawyer’s succession Gianni Agnelli reveal a chilling coincidence. We are talking about the draft of a notarial deed, which on the title page bears a stamp with the date of 14 November 2000, with which the lawyer ordered the donation of the bare ownership of his shareholding in Dicembre, the Agnelli family safe, equal to approximately 25%, to his son Edoardo, reserving the usufruct for himself.
An act (whose signature, reading the text, was scheduled for 2001) which would therefore have brought Agnelli’s son, like what had already been arranged in the past in favor of his wife Marella Caraccioloof his daughter Margherita Agnelliand his nephew John Elkannon the command bridge of the safe that controls all the companies of what was then the Fiat galaxy. On the same day, a draft of the agreement to amend the shareholders’ agreements of December was also prepared, to adapt them to the entry into the shareholder structure Edoardo Agnelli. But the documents prepared by the notary will never go beyond the draft stage. The tragic death of Edoardo, which occurred on the morning of November 15, 2000, not even 24 hours after the preparation of the documents, made the transfer of shares impossible. In fact, that day, the body of the lawyer’s male heir was found at the foot of the General Franco Romano viaduct of the Turin-Savona motorway. A traffic officer from the infrastructure manager, Ats, had raised the alarm after noticing the metallic gray Fiat Croma of Edoardo Agnelli parked on the viaduct, with the doors closed, the engine running, but with the safety locks open. Apparently a stop for a breakdown, but without the driver. The ATS employee then tried to go to the first service area, to check if the driver of the Croma had somehow arrived there to ask for assistance. In vain.
Having returned back, he leaned out of the viaduct, seeing on the bed of the Stura river what was later revealed to be the body of Edoardo Agnelli. An eighty meter flight that could leave no escape. The death of the lawyer’s son was dismissed by investigators as a suicide, but over the years numerous journalistic investigations have cast doubt on this version. Starting from the fact that Edoardo, who lived alone in a villa in Revigliasco, in the Turin area, was followed 24 hours a day by an escort. However, they were not with him on the morning of November 15th. There was no shortage of religious conspiracy theories either. In 2005 Iranian TV broadcast a documentary on Edoardo’s death. The images showed the place of death, the Fiat sign, and the interview of a “hojatoleslam”, a Muslim priest who supported the son of Gianni Agnelli had converted to Shiite Islam.
The thesis of the documentary released by Fars, a news agency close to the then president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejadwas precisely that of religiously motivated murder. According to their theorem Edward would have been eliminated by order of unknown persons to prevent the Fiat empire from falling into the hands of a Muslim convert.
An unsupported thesis, and made even more unlikely by the fact that Edoardo, who carried a difficult past also marked by drug problems, had always refused to take on roles in the family group. Within which he essentially had the role of the rebel. So much so that, upon the death of Giovannino Agnellison of Umberto and designated successor at the helm of the Turin group, the lawyer had staked everything on his nephew John Elkann. Someone had also raised doubts about the fact that Edoardo’s body, despite having flown eighty meters after climbing over a parapet (actually not very high, as can be seen from the photo on this page), still had his braces fastened and his moccasins on.
Other doubts had arisen from the lack of witnesses: was it possible that the gesture had not drawn the attention of motorists to the busy A6 viaduct, inaugurated a year earlier after the doubling expected for years, which had finally secured an infrastructure which, by a curious twist of fate, was called “the motorway of death”? All hypotheses and inferences which, however, have never called into question the judicial truth, but which in light of the new document which confirms that the Lawyer will give Edoardo his share of December, are almost certainly destined to come back to life.
The fact is that February 24, 2003 Marella Caracciolo transferred 25% of its holdings in December in favor of John Elkannwith a deed almost identical to the one prepared for the donation by the Lawyer to his son Edoardo. The typescript of which, together with other papers, resurfaced in November 2024 during a search by the Turin Financial Police in the lawyer’s office Franzo Grande Stevenshistoric advisor to the Lawyer. The papers were included in the file of the criminal investigation into the Agnelli inheritance conducted by the Turin prosecutors Marco Gianoglio, Mario Bendoni And Giulia Marchettiopened after the complaint of Margherita Agnellionly daughter of Gianni and Marella (as well as mother of JohnLapo e Geneva Elkann), which challenges the legitimacy of donations and tax residences used to move part of the inheritance to Switzerland and tax havens. Among the seized papers, also the draft of the deed of 24 February 2003 (which on the title page bears a stamp identical to that of the 2000 document, with the date of 19 February 2003), signed by the lawyer’s widow in the notary’s office in the belief that she was carrying out the wishes of Gianni Agnellimade explicit in the so-called «Munich letter of 17 July 1996», in which Gianni Agnellishortly before undergoing a delicate surgery in Monte Carlo, donated his remaining December share to his nephew John, after Edoardo had refused previous donations. An act which, however, according to the version of Margherita Agnelli and his lawyers, was superseded by the lawyer’s holographic will dating back to 20 January 1998, favorable to his son Edoardo, whose existence, however, remained unknown until recently.
So much so that, yesterday, the lawyers of Margherita Agnelli they returned to the attack, reiterating that «the document dated 1998, containing the autographed will of the Lawyer Lambs in favor of his son Edoardo, in relation to the share held in the December company, had remained completely unknown – not only to the public, but also to the parties involved (at least from the Margherita Agnelli) – until its recent discovery.” «Before this», they point out, «the only last will provisions known (and even published on websites) regarding December were those referred to in the Munich Letter of 1996, with which the Lawyer Lambs he ruled in favor of his nephew John Elkann». For the lawyers of the lawyer’s daughter, the 1998 document, however, «attests to the revocation of the 1996 provisions, which no longer expressed the desire to Gianni Agnelli». According to the note «when opening and publishing the will, these handwritten provisions should have been made known to all interested parties». The version of the brothers’ lawyers Elkann however, it is diametrically opposite, so much so that they point out how «the selective diffusion of trial documents omits, not surprisingly, to make known many others, from which it can be deduced that the wishes of Gianni and Marella Agnelli have been respected and fulfilled in all respects and that Margherita Agnelli he was perfectly aware of it.” Almost an explicit accusation against the other party for having disclosed the documents, which suggests that the legal conflict between mother and children is destined to rise even further.
