The couturier Pierre Cardin died in December 2020 at the age of 98. He had no children. During his life he created a millionaire empire and among other belongings he left real estate in Paris and the south of France, such as a 350 million mansion and the castle of the Marquis de Sade. In the world of leisure, he owned the restaurant and hotel chain Maxim’s, for which he received a purchase offer of 2.5 billion euros in 2016. Almost three years after his death, his heirs are still embroiled in a war over his inheritance.
When he died, everything pointed out that the lucky one to keep everything would be his nephew, the architect Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin, who became the group’s general manager in 2018 and then president in 2020. Basilicati, who says he has worked for nearly 25 years alongside his step-uncle, he wants to “respect the will of Pierre Cardin, preserve his empire and defend his image”. Opposing him are his cousins, also Cardin’s nieces, who accuse him of wanting to “recover all the individual patrimony of Pierre Cardin and the group with dubious and possibly fraudulent maneuvers”, says his lawyer Jean-Louis Rivière in the ‘AFP. They want the group to be sold and denounce “an attempted inheritance theft” by Basilicati. According to Rivière, most of the Cardin family would be on the side of the women. The group’s assets are estimated at between 750 and 800 million euros, according to the purchase proposals, the lawyer points out.
One of the key points of the battle is in an alleged will signed by Pierre Cardin in November 2016 that designates Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin as the sole heir. Curiously, it was he who found this document in 2022 in his great-uncle’s Parisian building. A “timely” finding after a purchase offer from the group with which “85% of the heirs agree”, points out lawyer Rivière. The validity of this will is being investigated by a civil court in Paris.
But the war between the two sides has reached the criminal ground. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation in March following a complaint filed by the Cardin girls for abuse of weakness, aggravated abuse of trust and fraud. This demand is added to a previous one, which was rejected in June, and two more that are being analyzed; one for breach of trust and forgery, and another for fraud and breach of trust.
In one of the lawsuits, the brides question the way Basilicati-Cardin took control of the holding days after the death of the great-grandson. His doubts revolve around the validity of the deed of assignment of the parts that his grandmother Giovanna Cardin should have signed, days before her death in March 2000 at the age of 97. Rodrigo Basilicati-Cardin responded on June 21 with a defamation lawsuit.
Under the impulse of Rodrigo, the Pierre Cardin company returned in March to the official women’s ready-to-wear calendar in Paris after a 25-year absence.
