The drama that has long beset the Onassis dynasty has taken another turn after reports that Athina Roussel, the family’s sole surviving member, is determined to fight the old men who guard her grandfather’s fortune in Athens.
Friends of the heiress say that — with her marriage to Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto, a Brazilian showjumper, looming — she is determined to gain control of the charitable foundation that runs half of the empire left by the shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
”What we can expect to see is a clash between the last surviving Onassis and the remnants of her grandfather’s working environment,” Alexis Matheakis, a family friend, said. ”I think the Onassis saga is only just beginning. No one can predict which way it is going to go.”
The foundation was set up in memory of her uncle, Alexander, who was killed in an air crash in 1973, and is administered by three of the tycoon’s former employees — collectively known as the greybeards.
Athina, who is 20, came into a fortune conservatively estimated at £1-billion (R11,54-billion) last year. She will follow her mother, Christina, who was found dead in a bathtub at the age of 38, in becoming the organisation’s president when she turns 21.
But the greybeards have signalled that they are equally determined to thwart Athina’s aspirations.
The foundation’s head, Stelios Papadimitriou, said: ”We are not going to turn it 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.”
Athina’s father, Thierry Roussel, also spent years in legal battles with the Greek guardians.
”I’ve heard Athina definitely wants to become president, and as an Onassis it is her inalienable right enshrined in the foundation’s charter,” said Matheakis.
He said that neither Christina nor Jackie Kennedy, who assumed a position on the foundation’s board after marrying Onassis, spoke Greek. — Guardian Unlimited Â