Italian princess disputes $200million Royal Court judgement

Monday 27 November 2017

An Italian society princess who was found by Jersey’s Royal Court to have conspired with her filmstar mother to secretly direct family wealth worth millions away from her sister has disputed those conclusions in a French gossip magazine.

The comments came from Princess Camilla Bourbon de Deux Siciles (46), the daughter of 1960s filmstar Edoarda Crociani (77) in Paris Match magazine following a five-year court battle over a trust fund worth $200million that concluded in September.

The case involved numerous financial structures and jurisdictions spanning Jersey, the Bahamas, Holland, Mauritius and the US.

During the case, the courts heard from Mrs Crociani’s other daughter, Cristiana (44), alleging she had been locked in a “golden hell” by her mother, who she said had been obsessed with marrying the two sisters to princes.

Pictured: The Crociani family dispute was reported in Connect magazine this month.

While Camilla ultimately succeeded in this, Cristiana did not. This, Cristiana felt, may have been one of the reasons that led formidable matriarch Edoarda to restructure wealth worth millions in her sister’s favour. 

According to a judgement penned by Commissioner Julian Clyde-Smith, who presided over the case, the first indication of this preference came when Mrs Crociani “apportioned the vast bulk” of the family’s artwork collection in favour of Camilla. The princess was later handed a company that was “the jewel in the crown” of the family wealth, as well as many properties. 

Meanwhile, “Cristiana had no inkling that this was afoot.”

Following successful representation by Bedell Cristin, however, the Court found in favour of Cristiana and ordered that the family trust be reconstituted.

Pictured: Bedell Cristin’s Advocate Anthony Robinson, who worked on the case alongside Advocates Edward Drummond and Sonia Shah.

But Princess Camilla, who declined to give evidence during the Royal Court case, has since claimed to French glossy Paris Match that she too was a “victim” of the wealth restructuring and would appeal.

The Court observed that “Cristiana clearly found her mother intimidating, a person who she felt she could not challenge, and of whom she lived in some fear,” adding that this account was backed by other witnesses. But Camilla came to her mother’s defence during the interview. 

She explained*: “The beneficiaries of these structures have always been my mother, sister and myself. Contrary to what one reads, our mother did not lock us in a “golden cage” - on the contrary, she created her own fortune that she always shared with us. I firstly owe her one thing, education and the fact that she gave us a global openness, having enabled us to study in New York and travel the world, learn languages and open us to different cultures… Since she became a widow when I was nine years old, she dedicated her life to her two daughters.” 

Cristiana told the Court how her mother asked her not to attend family engagements, but her mother told others that she had “disappeared.” Having learned of her mother and sister’s actions, Cristiana decided to cut off contact and remained with her young family in the Dominican Republic.

Pictured: Camilla’s interview on the Paris Match website.

Camilla painted* a rather different picture of the family’s relationship. “Everyone makes their choice, my sister made different choices and I do not wish to comment on them. We were however an extraordinarily united family, with my daughters and my sister’s daughters who are the same age. So imagine the great pain that I felt when my sister and her daughters went to live in Santo Domingo, and that she only communicated through letters from lawyers and started legal proceedings in Holland, the Dutch Antilles and France… Despite all of this,  have not lost hope of one day finding the family harmony in which we lived in the past.”

An appeal against the Royal Court decision will begin in February 2018.

*Translated from French. 

Click here to read the full story of the Crociani family dispute in Connect magazine.