Onassis Christina - biography, facts from life, photographs, background information. Exclusive: The public loneliness of Athena Onassis A film about the mysterious death of Onassis's daughter
In August 1978, the entire world press was full of headlines: “Sensation! The richest woman in the world is marrying a one-eyed communist!” It was about Christina Onassis, who came to Moscow to marry a simple Soviet employee Sergei Kauzov.
Strange Romance
Christina was the daughter and only heir of the Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis. By the age of 24, she had lost her mother, brother and father and was left completely alone. She had to continue the family business - shipping. Once she had a business conversation on the phone with an employee of the Sovfracht company about the USSR leasing five oil tankers for transporting grain. The man on the other end of the line spoke perfect English. Later, Christina found out that his name was Sergei Kauzov.
They soon met in Paris to conclude a deal. Christina offered Kauzov a large sum of bonuses, but he refused. This captivated her and became the beginning of their romance.
At first glance, there was nothing remarkable about Kauzov - an ordinary man under 40, short in stature, with thinning hair. In addition, one of Sergei’s eyes was glassy – a consequence of injury. However, he had masculine charm and self-confidence.
For a long time no one guessed about the romance between Onassis and Kauzov. What could an employee of the Soviet Ministry of the Navy, a member of the CPSU and a Greek multimillionaire have in common? In addition, Kauzov was married and had a sick daughter. But Christina, who was in love, was not satisfied with just adultery - she demanded that her lover divorce and marry her. As compensation, she allocated a large sum of money to Sergei’s first wife Natalya, and their daughter a substantial monthly allowance until adulthood. Kauzov quickly filed for divorce.
For Christina, this was already her third marriage: her previous husbands were businessman Joe Bolker and Greek banker Alexander Andreadis. Both marriages did not last long.
Unequal marriage
They say that L. I. Brezhnev himself gave permission to marry. True, shortly before the wedding the groom was expelled from the party. Subsequently, there were persistent rumors that this union was the work of the KGB: in this way, the Soviet government allegedly tried to get to the millions of the Onassis family.
The wedding took place on August 1, 1978 in the Griboyedovsky registry office. Only friends and relatives of the groom were present. Western correspondents were waiting at the doors of the registry office. The Soviet press did not write a word about this event.
Immediately after the wedding, Sergey and Christina spent their honeymoon on Lake Baikal. Then they returned to Moscow. Christina and her bodyguard lived in a room at the Intourist Hotel and occasionally visited the modest two-room apartment on Mosfilmovskaya, where Sergei and his mother lived.
Of course, the multimillionaire was not too happy with this state of affairs. She appealed to the city authorities with a request to provide the couple with decent apartments. To satisfy the request of the illustrious person, the Moscow City Council moved the poet Valery Sorokin, who lived in a three-room apartment, to another house. The apartment was combined with a neighboring two-room apartment, and the Onassis-Kauzov couple received a five-room “palace” in Bezbozhny (now Protopopovsky) Lane.
However, Christina was never able to get used to Soviet life. Three months later she went back to Europe. Sergei followed her. At one time the couple lived on an island in the Aegean Sea. From there, Christina, according to some sources, transferred about 500 thousand dollars to the funds of the CPSU.
Meanwhile, the company's Board of Directors opposed Kauzov becoming one of the equal partners in the Onassis empire. All Christina could do for her husband was to open a bank account in his name.
After divorce
Their marriage lasted a total of about two years. Perhaps he would have lasted longer, but Christina could not get pregnant. Eventually, both felt that their relationship had run its course. When they broke up, Christina gave Sergei two tankers and an apartment in London, making him a millionaire. Kauzov did not return to the Soviet Union - in the 80s he got a job at the London company Interoceanic factore agency Inc., which was part of a group of companies owned by the Onassis family. There, in London, he married for the third time - to the Englishwoman Alison Harkes.
Christina Onassis married Frenchman Thierry Roussel for the fourth time in 1983, to whom she gave birth to a daughter, Athena. This marriage also lasted only two years. And on November 19, 1988, Cristina was found dead in the apartment of her school friend in Buenos Aires. According to unofficial data, death was caused by a drug overdose.
On November 19, 1988, at the age of 37, the richest woman in the world, Christina Onassis, died. 10 years earlier, she settled on Bezbozhny Lane in Moscow, next to the Prospekt Mira metro station.
Aristotle, who completed only six school years, created his own life, turning from a port dispatcher into the richest man on the planet. Onassis collected women like diamonds, but only four left a serious mark on his life: his first wife (from 1946 to 1960), Athena Livanos, the only one with whom he had children in common (a son and a daughter); the brilliant opera singer Maria Callas, who lost her voice in 1968 after learning about Aristotle’s second marriage to John F. Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and his daughter Christina, whom he spoiled all his life, naming his yacht after her—in fact, a floating residence.
Christina with her father |
Onassis's pride and hope was his son Alexander, but he died in 1973 when his plane crashed during takeoff. The tragedy broke Aristotle, and he slowly faded away for two years, turning into a ruin. His daughter was with him all this time.
Christina became the heir to a huge financial empire spread across all continents. After her father’s death, she didn’t even have an exact idea of what she owned; she only accumulated 33 tons of gold bars.
The life of this woman is reminiscent of an ancient Greek epic with its constant attributes: love, betrayal, tragic coincidences, betrayals, disappointments and experiences, short-term happiness and prolonged depression.
Already at the age of eighteen, Christina, to spite her parents, married a 48-year-old American Jew, Joseph Bolker. The angry father threatened to disinherit her if the marriage was not annulled. The newlyweds lived together for 9 months and eventually divorced. At the same time, Christina tried to commit suicide for the first time.
The attempt failed, and Christina continued to fight the loneliness she feared most, plunging headlong into partying. However, the chosen remedy turned out to be ineffective. It was during this period that all her loved ones died, first her brother and mother, and then her father.
To cope with the management of gigantic capital, Christina needed male support, and she hastened to marry the rich man Alexandros Andreadis. However, this marriage also turned out to be short-lived and lasted only a year.
The third attempt to arrange a personal life turned out to be the most controversial and curious. Christina Onassis's chosen one turned out to be Russian - Sovfracht official Sergei Kauzov.
They began an affair that no one suspected. Therefore, the news of the marriage was a surprise to everyone, especially since in order to marry Christina, Sergei had to urgently divorce his first wife. There were rumors that Christina simply bought her future husband from her wife for a very substantial sum
Despite all Kristina’s attempts to settle down in Moscow, their life was not successful, since Kristina was unable to get used to Soviet reality. She returned to Europe and two years later they separated completely.
Christina's fourth marriage also failed. Her new husband, French businessman Thierry Roussel, whom she loved and to whom she gave birth to a daughter, Athena, betrayed her feelings by cheating on Christina with his former mistress, the Swede Gabi Landhange, who also bore him a child.
She returned to her former wild life of parties and drugs and arrived in Buenos Aires in 1988, rumored to be getting married for the fifth time. However, she was found dead in the bathroom of her friend's house.
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Recently, Greek newspapers have been writing a lot about the granddaughter and only heiress of the famous Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis, young Athina and her “Brazilian” love. However, at one time they wrote even more about her mother Christina Onassis and her “Soviet” love
Western media wrote a lot about this incredible marriage; huge photographs of the newlyweds adorned the front pages of the world's largest newspapers and magazines.
They say that Christina met Kauzov first by phone. She spoke from Paris, where the office of her company Olympicmaritim, inherited from her father, was located with the Moscow representative office of Sovfracht on business - the lease of its tankers for oil transportation by the Soviet side. For the USSR, which was then just beginning to enter the world oil markets, such negotiations were extremely important. At the other end of the line, Sergei picked up the phone and the young woman - Kristina was then 27 years old - really liked, as she later recalled, his “pleasant voice” and impeccable English pronunciation.
They soon met in Paris, where Kauzov was sent to conduct business negotiations. Sergei Danilovich was 37 years old when he met the billionaire. The man, as they say, is in the prime of his strength and talents. But because it could be surprising that an affair could begin between him and Christina? However, we remind the reader that in those still harsh times, any contacts of Soviet citizens with foreigners were strictly controlled. And there was no question that a fellow employee, a party member, could meet with a foreigner on his own initiative and without the knowledge of his superiors.
Christina immediately liked Kauzov. He was a little shorter than her and was already beginning to go bald, but Christina herself was by no means Marilyn Monroe. This is how one of her then acquaintances described her appearance: “I would not call a Greek beauty a beauty: above average height, thin, with underdeveloped breasts, short hair. Only the big dark eyes attracted attention.”
Kauzov was already married and had a daughter. Which is not surprising: in those days unmarried people were not allowed to go on business trips abroad at all. What attracted the billionaire to Kauzov? After all, he couldn’t be called handsome either. One of his eyes was slightly squinted, and his mouth was full of metal teeth. Sharp-tongued Western newspapermen dubbed him “a KGB agent with a glass eye.” However, the Moscow employee probably had some special masculine charm that attracted women. Even experienced ones and even people like the Greek billionaire, who already had two husbands before Kauzov.
They say that Kauzova finally managed to win the heart of the wayward Kristina when, having signed a successful contract with Sovfracht, she offered Sergei Danilovich a large sum of bonuses, but he categorically refused. “What nobility!” - Christina decided and fell head over heels in love. Naive billionaire! If she had known that any Soviet foreign worker would have done the same in those days: for receiving currency from foreigners “on an especially large scale” in the USSR they could have been shot...
After their first meeting in Paris, their meetings became constant, sometimes, as reporters from Western tabloid newspapers excitedly wrote, they spent whole days and nights together. Of course, since the newspapers wrote about this, Kauzov’s superiors were well aware of such meetings. At that time, just one such “unauthorized” rendezvous in a Paris hotel was enough for a Soviet employee to be immediately sent home and never appear abroad again. However, for some reason this did not happen with Kauzov. Not only did he continue to date Christina, but he was even allowed to marry her.
This could be explained at that time in only two ways. Either Kauzov was a KGB officer specially assigned to Kristina, or the KGB, having noticed an affair between a fellow employee and a billionaire, decided to “develop” this connection in the “interests of the state.” At least, that’s how the CIA regarded this marriage - as an attempt by the KGB to establish control over the Onassis shipping empire.
As the newspapers wrote, agents of French intelligence and the CIA were constantly on duty near Christina Onassis’s apartment in Paris and the hotels where the lovers spent their nights. They tried to put pressure on the Greek woman through her friends to prevent the marriage. But Christina inherited from her father his stubborn character and complete disregard for the opinions of others. She herself laughingly explained her extraordinary passion to her friends: “Russian, communist, KGB representative - so many forbidden fruits in one basket, who could resist?”
Kauzov divorced his wife and in August 1978 a sensational marriage was registered in the central wedding palace of Moscow. There were only a few people present at the ceremony from the groom's side, and no one from the bride's side.
There was also a small scandal. Western paparazzi, who specially arrived in Moscow for this purpose, managed to photograph Kauzov at the moment when, having approached the registry office, he removed the windshield wipers from his brand new Volga, as all car owners in Moscow did then. Imagine: a man marries a billionaire and a few minutes before the wedding does not forget about the “janitors”!
After a honeymoon spent on Lake Baikal, the young couple settled in Moscow. How did Onassis’s daughter, accustomed to luxury, feel there? “Yes, it was not the Winter Palace,” Christina later admitted to her Western friends. Of course, she did not stay long in the capital of “mature socialism”, but soon returned to Paris. For some time, the husband and wife continued to meet and made plans for the future. Kauzov even began working in the Paris office of her company.
However, Christina Onassis did not feel so bad in Moscow, despite the unobtrusive Soviet service. For example, she really liked the Moscow markets and especially liked Russian cottage cheese. In addition, she was pleased that no one would recognize her on the Moscow streets. However, soon there was a cooling between the spouses and they separated without living together for even a year and a half.
Remaining in the West after his divorce from Christina, Sergei Danilovich settled permanently in London and married for the third time. This time on the Englishwoman Alison Harkes, the former mistress of the British Minister of Defense. Ladies, as we see, with very specific connections. Need I say that this marriage did not last long?
A secret note from KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Mikhail Gorbachev was published: “Using the financial assistance and influence of K. Onassis, S.D. Kauzov founded several of his own companies, taking ownership of ten ships in whole or in part, and concentrated in his hands a capital of 25 million dollars, of which he deposited 3 million in accounts in Swiss and London banks. Since July 1982, S.D. Kauzov, in accordance with the agreement concluded with him, transferred a large amount of foreign currency as his party contribution, which allowed him to remain in the ranks of the CPSU. So far he has transferred $450,000.”
The fate of Christina Onassis was tragic. In November 1988, sad news did not come from Buenos Aires. Newspapers wrote that the billionaire died of a drug overdose.
Christina was quietly buried in the family crypt along with her father and brother Alexander, who died in a plane crash, on the island of Skorpios in the Aegean Sea, which her father gave her.
Sergei Kauzov did not lay claim to her inheritance and did not even come to the funeral.
During her marriage to Kauzov, Kristina transferred about $500 thousand to the CPSU funds.
Mr. Kauzov lives in Switzerland. His mother also lives there.
Having married for the first time in 1978, I financially supported a student family in a fairly common way at that time - by sweeping two janitors' plots along Bezbozhny (now Protopopovsky Lane). Fortunately, we lived a hundred meters from him in an old, pre-revolutionary house.
Not long before this, the construction of 4 fourteen-story residential buildings of the CPSU Central Committee was completed in the alley. The audience there was varied - artists, athletes, and, of course, bosses.
The most extravagant was the tenant from the 14th house - the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalan, exchanged for the dissident Bukovsky. There was a well-known indecent couplet about him rumored to be attributed to Vysotsky:
They exchanged Corvalan for a simple hooligan,
Where can I find such a b...d to replace Brezhnev?
Corvalan often walked around the area with his daughters and a small motley group of women. Fortunately, behind the TsEK houses there was the botanical garden of Moscow State University (the former apothecary garden of Peter I).
The life of big bosses back then was little different from the life of the director of any store. Not like today. There were few cars in the yards, and there were no garages. Those who were in office rode on official ones.
The Kauzov-Onassis also decided not to stand out and traveled in a Volga. Of course, the housing office knew who was staying, but the janitors always know everything.
On the Internet you come across information about Christina’s life in the Khrushchev. It must be said that there was no better housing than the TsEK houses in Moscow at that time! The old buildings, now once again luxury mansions, were horribly maintained. And often they consisted of only communal apartments.
Bulat Okudzhava, who lived with the Kauzovs in the same house, wrote:
I was evicted from Arbat, an Arbat emigrant.
In Bezbozhny Lane my talent is withering away.
There are strange faces and hostile places all around.
Although the sauna is opposite, the fauna is not the same.
I was evicted from Arbat and deprived of my past,
and my face is not scary to strangers, but funny...
but he moved to Bezbozhny not under duress, but to improve his living conditions, as they wrote then in applications for a new apartment.
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After Athena's birth, it became known that her father continued to date his former flame, Swedish model Gabi Landhange. Moreover, Gabi entered into a contract with Roussel, according to which, even being married to someone else, Thierry is obliged to continue his relationship with this Swede, and at the same time with Athena, another child of Thierry was born in Switzerland. Christina could not stand such a nightmare and left, taking her daughter, and began taking drugs again. And in 1988, when Aristotle Onassis’s granddaughter Athena was three years old, Christina committed suicide by swallowing diet pills. And the two-faced Roussel took his daughter to his place in Switzerland and began to seek the opportunity to become Athena’s guardian and, accordingly, the manager of the fortune awaiting her.
Athena spent her childhood and adolescence in the company of dozens of bodyguards in well-guarded fortified houses and armored cars; they tried to kidnap her more than once for ransom.
Today Athena lives in Belgium, where she trains with her husband, Brazilian show jumper Alvaro Miranda Neto (nicknamed Doda), winner of the Sydney Olympic bronze in the team event. Together with their two children, they come every day to the stables of their mutual friends, the Pessoa family, and ride the best horses owned by Athena, AD SportHorses.
In January 2003, 18-year-old Athena Onassis-Rousselle was overtaken by the family's fabulous funds: the first 600 million from her grandfather's fabulous inheritance were transferred to her account. Young Athena, who in her youth zealously rejected this condition, changed her mind and not only entered into inheritance rights, but through the courts won them from the management of the Onassis Foundation.
Athena dreamed so much of finding simple female happiness and a strong shoulder that for the wedding she lost 20 kg and lightened her hair. She even acquired the ownership of the horse breeding company AD SportHorses so that her lover could show his talents on the best horses.
The abandoned wife of her lover, in a fit of frenzy, sent her two children to Belgium to live with her ex-husband, justifying herself by the lack of time to raise them. But even such a burden that suddenly fell on Athena’s shoulders did not become a burden. She knew from her own example how difficult it was to live without parents, and what was even worse - to be the subject of controversy and scandals. She accepted the children and is raising them as family, taking the boy to football training every day, and introducing the girl to equestrian sports.
Athena Onassis married Alvaro de Miranda Neto in 2005 in the garden of the Museum of Art in San Paolo. Before formalizing the relationship, the young people lived together for two years. The wedding ceremony was as luxurious as it was secret, and the only reporter who entered the celebration as a waiter was caught and stripped of his equipment.
The famous billionaire once spent years on the island, his wedding to Jacqueline Kennedy took place there, and now he rests in a small local chapel.
Athena is the sole heiress of the Onassis family and, according to some estimates, the amount of her fortune is equal to 2.5 billion euros, invested in business, real estate, shops, art collections and private jets.
Now the island is empty, no one lives there (the local inhabitants were evicted half a century ago), and a special security service ensures that strangers do not enter the territory of Skorpios. It seems that the Mediterranean paradise has lost its romantic appeal for the 24-year-old heiress when annual payments for its maintenance increased to 1.5 million euros. According to another version, Athena decided to sell the island after the Greek authorities denied her husband, Brazilian Alvaro de Miranda, Greek citizenship. After all, the world is full of billionaires who dream and dream of how to take possession of the legendary island and thereby enter the cohort of not just the richest people on Earth, but also aristocrats in the eyes of history. The price announced for Skorpios - 120 million euros - did not frighten, but attracted, as FashionTravel learned, at least three potential buyers.
The proposal is being seriously considered by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, our domestic capitalist Roman Abramovich and Madonna. The singer is not as concerned about the status of the owner of such pretentious real estate as the opportunity to get closer to the beautiful love story that happened in 1968 between Aristotle and John F. Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy. After all, the story developed precisely on this picturesque island, although it ended prosaically - in marriage. Meanwhile, the main contender for Skorpios is still considered Bill Gates, who was the first to voice his plans.
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On November 19, 1988, under unclear circumstances, 37-year-old Christina Onassis, the only daughter of the famous Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis, tragically died. She was an entrepreneur and owned her father's huge empire.
Biography
Christina was born in New York on December 11, 1950. Like all real princesses, she grew up in luxury, even her dolls had clothes from Dior. The daughter of a billionaire, like her older brother Alexander, was raised in several countries: France, England, Greece. She studied at school in Headington (Oxford) and at King's College in London.
In the mid-70s, when Christina was 24 years old, she lost all her relatives. They passed away one after another: first, their brother died in a plane crash in 1973, in 1974, their mother died from a drug overdose, and in 1975, the famous father Aristotle Onassis also died. After his death, Christina renounced her American citizenship, remaining a citizen of Greece and Argentina.
Personal life of Christina Onassis
From her first two marriages, Christina was left with only disappointment, but in 1978 she met Sergei Kauzov, who, according to many, was a KGB officer. Their romance developed rapidly, Sergei moved to Paris, and not only French intelligence learned about this connection, but also the CIA, where they sounded the alarm that the KGB had plans for Onassis’s fortune. But this stopped Christina, and the marriage, which the entire Western world was talking about, but only a select few knew about in the USSR, took place.
The wedding ceremony took place in the Griboyedov Wedding Palace, only Kauzov’s relatives were present, but, finding herself in a small Moscow apartment, Christina realized that she would not live in the USSR, and a few days later she returned to Europe. Sergei went after her; the newlyweds had plans to have a child, but they were not destined to come true. Divorce followed; Christina gave her ex-husband a tanker.
Christina's last husband was Thierry Roussel, a French businessman. He was not faithful to her and maintained contact with his former lover, who had two illegitimate children. Christina could not come to terms with this, and in 1987 she divorced again. However, it was Roussel who became the father of her only child, her daughter Athena.
In the fall of 1988, Christina arrived in Argentina, where she was going to walk down the aisle for the fifth time. Her chosen one was the brother of her childhood friend, Georgios Tsolmektsoglou, for whom she had a strong feeling, but she did not have time to realize her dream.
The mystery of death and will
From the memoirs of Marina Tsolmektsoglu-Dodoro, who discovered Christina’s body on November 19, 1988, it is unclear what caused the death. Christina was found in the bathroom, sitting by the door, water flowing from the tap. There were no traces of tranquilizers in the body, and, according to the witness, Christina did not take them in the last days of her life.
The mysterious death of the owner of the Onassis fortune left many questions. Who benefited from her death? An autopsy showed that she had pulmonary edema, but doctors said that Christina's heart was healthy. The version of suicide was also not confirmed, since Christina was happy and was getting married; Besides, her daughter was growing up.
Christina Onassis changed her will several times, but after divorcing her last husband, she made her daughter Athena the sole heir to a huge fortune, according to various estimates, reaching $3 billion. She deprived Roussel of his share of the inheritance, allocating him $12.5 million a year for his maintenance.
Athena Onassis is the only surviving descendant of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and the only heir-daughter of Christina Onassis. Athena received 55% of the family's wealth, while the remaining 45%, with the exception of $26 million that went to Aristotle's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, went straight to the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. founded in honor of Aristotle's late son.
Athena Onassis Roussel, also known as Athena Onassis de Miranda, was born on January 29, 1985, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Athena is the daughter of Christina Onassis and her fourth husband, Thierry Roussel, heir to a pharmaceutical empire. The parents were married from 1984 to 1986. They divorced after Roussel's mistress, Swedish model Marianne "Gabi" Landage, became pregnant for the second time. Athena was three when her mother died of lung cancer in November 1988. The girl was raised by her father and Gabi, who later became Thierry’s wife.
The value of Athena's inherited fortune remains a matter of debate to this day, but she has been dubbed the "billionaire heiress" in the media. Among other things, Onassis inherited the small island of Skorpios off the west coast of Greece, which was sold to an unnamed Russian billionaire in 2013.
Athena's mother never fully trusted Thierry, which led to an agreement with the Council of Administrators, obligated to control the family savings until Athena turned eighteen. Christina chose four Greeks and Thierry Roussel as trustees who were to manage her daughter’s fortune. In the press the four were often called "Greybeards".
In 1999, when Athena was thirteen, she stated that she felt “a great dislike for anything Greek,” despite her mother being Greek. In one of her few public interviews, published in the Italian magazine Oggi, the heiress blamed the Onassis name for “all the problems.” Moreover, her stepmother Gabi stated in the program “20/20” that Athena once said that if she could burn all the money of the Onassis dynasty, she would do it.
During the grandiose legal battles on the part of Thierry and Christine's attorneys, 65 hearings took place. Both sides accused each other of embezzlement, mismanagement of assets, slander and organizing kidnappings. Athena's father stated that Greek proxies organized at least seven operations aimed at capturing his daughter. One of the attempts allegedly involved current and former employees of the Mossad, Israel's political intelligence agency.
On her eighteenth birthday, Athena began to control half of the family's inheritance. On her 21st birthday, in January 2006, she was unable to take control of the second half of the family fortune or become president of the Onassis Foundation, as originally expected. The foundation's board said it would not hand over its assets to Athena, who they claimed lacked the necessary skills. Her lawyers fought unsuccessfully for Athena's right to sit in the foundation's presidential chair.
The head of the foundation, Stelios Papadimitriou, said: "We are not going to hand over the Onassis Foundation to someone who has no connection with our culture, our religion, our language or our shared experiences, and who has never gone to college or worked a day in "She can do whatever she wants with what she inherited from her mother, but not with the legacy of the Onassis dynasty, donated to the Greek people in memory of Alexander Onassis."
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Athena began dating Brazilian professional show jumper Álvaro de Miranda Neto in March 2003. They got married on December 3, 2005. Neither the bride's father nor stepmother was present at the ceremony. The wife herself began to compete in equestrian competitions, using the name Athena Onassis de Miranda. Now the couple lives in São Paulo, where Athena purchased a duplex with an area of 980 square meters for $8.6 million. m, overlooking Ibirapuera Park, with space for 15 cars.
Athena began her equestrian career in her teenage years. More recently, in an attempt to reconnect with her maternal roots, she expressed her interest in learning Greek and reapplied for a Greek passport. Onassis also decided to compete in all equestrian competitions not for France, but for Greece.
Athena and Alvaro travel a lot every year when the World Champions Tour (jumping) takes place, in which Onassis has the status of official patron. One of the stages of the competition, in Rio de Janeiro, is named after Athena - “Athina Onassis International Horse Show”. The stage was first held in 2007, first in Sao Paulo. In 2009, competitions began to be held in a renovated center in Rio de Janeiro. Together with her husband, Athena owns the company "AD Sport Horses", based in Fleurus.
Athena Onassis is the only surviving descendant of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and the only heir-daughter of Christina Onassis. Athena received 55% of the family's wealth, while the remaining 45%, with the exception of $26 million that went to Aristotle's widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, went straight to the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. founded in honor of Aristotle's late son.
Athena Onassis Roussel, also known as Athena Onassis de Miranda, was born on January 29, 1985, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Athena is the daughter of Christina Onassis and her fourth husband, Thierry Roussel, heir to a pharmaceutical empire. The parents were married from 1984 to 1986. They divorced after Roussel's mistress, Swedish model Marianne "Gabi" Landage, became pregnant for the second time. Athena was three when her mother died of lung cancer in November 1988. The girl was raised by her father and Gabi, who later became Thierry’s wife.
The value of Athena's inherited fortune remains a matter of debate to this day, but she has been dubbed the "billionaire heiress" in the media. Among other things, Onassis inherited the small island of Skorpios off the west coast of Greece, which was sold to an unnamed Russian billionaire in 2013.
Athena's mother never fully trusted Thierry, which led to an agreement with the Council of Administrators, obligated to control the family savings until Athena turned eighteen. Christina chose four Greeks and Thierry Roussel as trustees who were to manage her daughter’s fortune. In the press the four were often called "Greybeards".
In 1999, when Athena was thirteen, she stated that she felt “a great dislike for anything Greek,” despite her mother being Greek. In one of her few public interviews, published in the Italian magazine Oggi, the heiress blamed the Onassis name for “all the problems.” Moreover, her stepmother Gabi stated in the program “20/20” that Athena once said that if she could burn all the money of the Onassis dynasty, she would do it.
During the grandiose legal battles on the part of Thierry and Christine's attorneys, 65 hearings took place. Both sides accused each other of embezzlement, mismanagement of assets, slander and organizing kidnappings. Athena's father stated that Greek proxies organized at least seven operations aimed at capturing his daughter. One of the attempts allegedly involved current and former employees of the Mossad, Israel's political intelligence agency.
On her eighteenth birthday, Athena began to control half of the family's inheritance. On her 21st birthday, in January 2006, she was unable to take control of the second half of the family fortune or become president of the Onassis Foundation, as originally expected. The foundation's board said it would not hand over its assets to Athena, who they claimed lacked the necessary skills. Her lawyers fought unsuccessfully for Athena's right to sit in the foundation's presidential chair.
The head of the foundation, Stelios Papadimitriou, said: "We are not going to hand over the Onassis Foundation to someone who has no connection with our culture, our religion, our language or our shared experiences, and who has never gone to college or worked a day in "She can do whatever she wants with what she inherited from her mother, but not with the legacy of the Onassis dynasty, donated to the Greek people in memory of Alexander Onassis."
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Athena began dating Brazilian professional show jumper Álvaro de Miranda Neto in March 2003. They got married on December 3, 2005. Neither the bride's father nor stepmother was present at the ceremony. The wife herself began to compete in equestrian competitions, using the name Athena Onassis de Miranda. Now the couple lives in São Paulo, where Athena purchased a duplex with an area of 980 square meters for $8.6 million. m, overlooking Ibirapuera Park, with space for 15 cars.
Athena began her equestrian career in her teenage years. More recently, in an attempt to reconnect with her maternal roots, she expressed her interest in learning Greek and reapplied for a Greek passport. Onassis also decided to compete in all equestrian competitions not for France, but for Greece.
Athena and Alvaro travel a lot every year when the World Champions Tour (jumping) takes place, in which Onassis has the status of official patron. One of the stages of the competition, in Rio de Janeiro, is named after Athena - “Athina Onassis International Horse Show”. The stage was first held in 2007, first in Sao Paulo. In 2009, competitions began to be held in a renovated center in Rio de Janeiro. Together with her husband, Athena owns the company "AD Sport Horses", based in Fleurus.