Faced with the court of Versailles, the only inheritor of the famous nose will have to answer the multiple accusations of the companion of the patriarch. A new episode in the legal battle that is tearing the perfumer’s family apart.
For several years now, there has been a scent of discord at the Guerlains: in a merciless face-to-face, the famous nose’s companion, Christina Kragh Michelsen, and the perfumer’s only son, Stéphane Guerlain, never cease to face with the filing of complaints. Today, the mistress of the house accuses the son of “non-public insults”, “threats” to his horses, “death threats” to his person, “moral harassment”, “aggravated willful violence” ( she assures that the son of her spouse would have tried to overthrow her with his vehicle) and of “subjection of a dependent person to unworthy housing conditions”.
Read alsoBetween refused marriage and accusation of attempted murder, the Guerlain family continues to tear each other apart
Nearly fifteen years after the start of hostilities, this Monday, June 20 could mark the high point of this closed family session resembling a Shakespearean tragedy: at 2 p.m., the perfumer’s son is summoned to appear before the Versailles Criminal Court. to answer these charges, learned The Figaro from a source familiar with the matter.
A manipulative partner?
At the heart of this legal battle would nestle a disagreement concerning the marriage of Jean-Paul Guerlain with Christina Kragh: Stéphane Guerlain would always have opposed this union, considering that his father wasmanipulate“by his lover, even though he is suffering from a form of Alzheimer’s, had confided to the Figaro a source familiar with the matter.
The enmity of the family with regard to the new conquest of Jean-Paul Guerlain had not prevented it from settling in 2007 in the family home, in the Yvelines. But the years pass and Christina Kragh does not see the shadow of a honeymoon. Worse: according to her lawyer, she regularly receives visits from her husband’s son, who allegedly harasses her.
The son, for his part, claims to be very worried not only for his father, but also for his heritage: in 2010, he received a phone call from a gallery owner friend who said he was surprised to have received a sales proposal from his mother-in-law’s share concerning a Delacroix belonging to the Guerlains. Fearing the worst, Stéphane Guerlain had asked to become his father’s guardian, a status he obtained in 2018.
The famous nose and his abandoned house
The four years that followed were a slow descent into hell for the Guerlain clan. Christina Kragh files several requests for change of guardianship as well as a marriage file. An alliance which is refused to him after a hearing where Jean-Paul Guerlain answered, to all the questions posed by the court, “I want to get married“. Bitterly disappointed by the failure of all her attempts to formalize her union with the perfumer, the Franco-Danish would have decided to make life hard for the employees “historicalfrom the house, forcing them to quit their jobs, one after the other.
But for Christina Kragh, these departures would only be the result of a strategy by Stéphane Guerlain, who would have cut off his father’s supplies. “Two bailiffs have repeatedly observed it: the house is in a pitiful state, there is mold everywhere and this winter, the heating and hot water have been cut off.“, reports to the Figaro Me Frédéric Bellet, the lawyer of the sexagenarian.
Nay, asserted at the time Me Pascal Koerfer, one of Stéphane Guerlain’s lawyers, for whom the abandonment in which Jean-Paul Guerlain and the Mesnuls estate are immersed is only the fruit of a policy carried out by Christina Kragh. Last October, however, she was released for “neglect of a person unable to protect himself”, which Stéphane Guerlain accused him of: if the court had found that she had obstructed the care necessary for health of Jean-Paul Guerlain, this deprivation had not been perceived as legally constituting an offense of abandonment, the court having considered that Christina Kragh “never had the manifest desire to abandon Mr. Jean-Paul Guerlain“.
Contacted by Le FigaroMe Olivier Combe, Stéphane Guerlain’s lawyer, affirms that his client is waiting for the court’s decision “in the greatest tranquility“, these offenses being according to him “totally unfounded“. Asked about the accusation of “unworthy accommodation”, the criminal lawyer underlines that “Mrs. Kragh is accommodated free of charge in a house that is certainly a little dilapidated, but very beautiful, and which in no way constitutes unworthy accommodation.term used in the context ofbusiness related to slum merchants“recalled the lawyer.
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