Nicolas Puech, a descendant of Hermès’ founder, Thierry Hermès, made headlines final yr after he reportedly deliberate to go away half his fortune to his former gardener — however he is now saying his billions have disappeared.
The 81-year-old has alleged in court docket filings that he not owns 6 million shares of Hermès price about $13 billion and that his former wealth supervisor of greater than 20 years, Eric Freymond, performed a component within the loss, the Swiss investigative information outlet Gotham Metropolis reported.
However a Swiss court docket threw out Puech’s allegations earlier this month, writing that the alleged fraud was “undetectable to frequent mortals,” in response to Bloomberg.
The Swiss information outlet Tribune de Genève reported that the inventory was deposited in a Geneva financial institution in 2012 however that it is now unclear the place the shares are.
Geneva’s Public Prosecutor’s Workplace had declined to analyze based mostly on Peuch’s allegations. The court docket’s resolution on July 24 backed up the prosecutors’ resolution.
Peuch’s attorneys, Grégoire Mangeat and Fanny Margairaz, advised Enterprise Insider in an announcement that they have been “within the technique of learning the prison file intimately” and declined to remark additional.
“My consumer is shocked by the accusation of his former consumer,” an legal professional for Freymond, Stéphane Grodecki, advised BI in an announcement, including that Freymond by no means dealt with the shares in query.
Freymond is analyzing authorized potentialities to “to defend his honor,” Grodecki mentioned.
Puech, who’s 81 and has no kids, beforehand owned 5.7% of Hermès as its largest particular person shareholder, the Tribune de Genève reported final yr.
Hermès was based in 1837 as a horse-saddle maker, and the model has since advanced into the final word standing image — and is a uncommon outlier in a slumping luxurious market in China, the place it lately reported regular gross sales.
Earlier than Peuch determined to undertake his former worker and bequeath him his multibillion-dollar fortune, he’d deliberate to go away his inheritance to the Isocrates Basis, Bloomberg reported — a nonprofit he based devoted to public-interest journalism.
Bloomberg reported that the way forward for the muse was in query. In November 2023, the muse mentioned it will not settle for new funding requests.
