Italian princess fined £2m to take case to Privy Council

Tuesday 27 July 2021

An Italian princess fined £2m by the Royal Court for contempt wants a guarantee that she'll get the money back, if she wins an appeal to the Privy Council.

Last month, Jersey's Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by Princess Camilla de Bourbon des Deux Siciles.

The Monaco-based aristocrat argued that the Royal Court had been wrong to fine her last December on a number of grounds, including that she did not receive a fair trial.

Now the princess is appealing that decision to the Privy Council’s Judicial Committee, which is the final court of appeal for the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.

Having already paid £200,000 of the fine in instalments, the Princess has said that she is ready to transfer the £1.8m balance to the Royal Court. However, she has requested that the Court provide her with a bank guarantee before she does this, which will ensure she will get the full amount back if her Privy Court appeal is successful. 

A summons has been issued for this application and will be heard in due course.

The Princess's case has played out in Jersey’s Royal Court over a number of years, and is linked to a landmark judgment in 2017, which ordered that a $200 million trust – including assets such as properties and paintings by famous artists – be reconstituted so that her sister, Cristiana, could once again benefit from it.

Cristiana had successfully argued that Princess Camilla and their mother, former film star Edy Vesel, later Edoarda Crociani, had conspired against her.

Camilla Crociani - whose title became Princess de Bourbon de Deux Siciles following her marriage to Prince Carlo, Duke of Castro – was found in contempt of court in October 2019 by failing to properly disclose the location of a $66m Gaugin painting, among other valuable family assets.

The £2m fine was imposed last December because the Royal Court judged that she hadn’t taken the opportunity to fully ‘purge’ that contempt.

The Princess argued that she was unable to pay the £2m fine and then appealed that judgment but this was rejected by the Court of Appeal.