The only surviving child of the late Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli is suing her father's most trusted advisers in a dispute over the management of his vast estate, lawyers said on Thursday.
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen has filed suit against Franzo Grande Stevens, Gianluigi Gabetti and Siegfrid Maron, managers of Agnelli's inheritance, in order to obtain a fuller accounting of his estate, lawyers for Margherita Agnelli said.
The suit, which comes more than four years after Gianni Agnelli's death, was filed with a Turin court on Wednesday.
Stevens - the family's chief legal advisor - and Gabetti have official roles in the Agnelli family's trust, Giovanni Agnelli & C., which holds a 30% stake in Fiat through two quoted holding companies, IFI and IFIL.
Maron is a private adviser with no official role in the family holdings.
Giovanni Agnelli & C. issued a statement expressing "full confidence in the company's management and support for their work".
It also noted that Margherita Agnelli chose to "definitively leave" the trust company's share capital in 2004.
Margherita Agnelli's eldest son John Elkann, who is deputy chairman of both Fiat and IFIL, appeared to disagree with his 51-year-old mother's move.
"I am very hurt as a son and surprised over this private matter which was resolved in 2004 with everyone's agreement," he told reporters on the sidelines of a Bank of Italy annual meeting in Rome.
Margherita Agnelli's lawyer Girolamo Abbatescianni stressed that "the only aim of this action is to obtain a clear and full accounting of all the assets making up the inheritance".
He said that his client's repeated requests for more information about the estate and the way it was being managed had been ignored by the three advisers, leaving her no choice but to turn to the courts.
"Her only aim is to protect all the heirs of Gianni Agnelli," the lawyer added. Fiat Chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo commented to reporters that "I am very sorry for the family but this is not something that directly or indirectly concerns Fiat and has no impact on the company".
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen has three children from her first marriage to the writer Alain Elkann and five from her second marriage to Russian count Serge Graf von der Pahlen.
John Elkann, 31, is expected to become head of the Fiat empire in the future.
Gianni Agnelli, one of the most powerful businessmen in Italy whose grandfather founded the carmaker in 1899, died in January 2003 at the age of 81 after a long battle against prostate cancer.
His brother Umberto subsequently took over as Fiat chairman but himself succumbed to cancer in May 2004 at the age of 69.
Gianni Agnelli also had a son, Edoardo, but he committed suicide in November 2000 at the age of 46, leaping to his death from a motorway bridge.
The death of Edoardo, a graduate in modern literature and oriental philosophy who was never directly involved in Fiat business, followed another family tragedy.
In December 1997, Umberto's son and Fiat heir apparent Giovanni Alberto Agnelli died at the age of 32 from a rare form of stomach cancer. Giovanni had been groomed by his charismatic uncle to take over the Fiat empire.
