Onassis heiress turns 18
The only grandchild of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, Athina, turns 18 today, and will come into her vast inheritance after years of bitter legal warfare between her father and her grandfather’s aides. It is unclear exactly how much Athina Roussel will be worth this morning, with estimates ranging from 800 million euros to just over 2 billion. Her possessions will include homes in Paris, Marbella, and Geneva, the islets of Skorpios – where her mother, Christina, and grandfather are buried – and Sparti in the Ionian, and land on the island of Lefkada and in the Athens coastal suburb of Glyfada. The will of Christina Onassis, who died in Argentina in 1988, stipulated that her only child’s fortune should be managed by Athina’s French father, Thierry Roussel, and four of Aristotle Onassis’s closest aides, all Greek, until her 18th birthday. The five never got on, and in 1999 the Swiss authorities appointed a private firm to manage Athina’s assets. Athina spends her time between the family home on the banks of Lake Geneva and Brussels, where she attends an equestrian school.
