Edoardo Agnelli

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This article is about Gianni Agnelli's son. For Gianni Agnelli's father, see Edoardo Agnelli (industrialist).

Edoardo Agnelli.

Edoardo Agnelli (9 June 1954 – November 5 2000) was an Italian-American entrepreneur, the son of the industrialist patriarch of Fiat, Gianni Agnelli, who died in controversial circumstances.

[edit] Life

Agnelli was born in New York. After studying at Atlantic College, he read modern literature and oriental philosophy at Princeton University,^[1] where he was given the nickname Crazy Eddie for his wild behaviour.^[2] After leaving Princeton he travelled in India, pursuing his interest in oriental religion and mysticism,^[1] and Iran, where he met Ayatollah Khamenei and was reported to have converted to Islam.^[3]

Edoardo Agnelli's offering Friday prayers behind with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran (1981).

As an adult Agnelli claimed to be the heir apparent to the Fiat empire, but his father, who had already been unhappy with Edoardo's timidity when he was a child, ensured that he would not inherit it.^[2] The only official position which the younger Agnelli held in the family businesses was as a director of Juventus football club,^[4] in which capacity he was present at the Heysel disaster.^[5]

In 1990 Agnelli was charged in Kenya with possession of 7 ounces of heroin, to which he pleaded innocent.^[6]

[edit] Death

In November 2000 Agnelli's body was found on a river bed beneath a motorway viaduct, on which his car was found abandoned.^[1] The viaduct is known as the bridge of suicides.^[7]

The death was considered by Italian investigators to have been suicide, but there is a theory in Iran that his death was orchestrated by Israeli agents to ensure that the Fiat empire did not fall into Eduardo Agnelli's hands.^[8]