Athina Onassis Is Worth $1 Billion—Here's What She Actually Lost

Описание: Athina Onassis is alive.She's forty years old. And she's still worth somewhere between five hundred million and one billion dollars.So this is not a story about a woman who lost her fortune.This is a story about what money couldn't protect her from. The vultures who circled her from the moment she was born. The adults who were supposed to shield her—and instead saw her as the biggest payday of their lives.And one of those adults was her own father.With a billion dollars, sympathy is hard to come by. Some of you are already thinking it. She's still richer than anyone watching this will ever be. Cry me a river.Fair point.With a billion dollars, Athina Onassis could have funded medical research that saved thousands of lives. She could have built schools across three continents. MacKenzie Scott gave away fourteen billion dollars and fundamentally changed how billionaires think about philanthropy. Athina could have done something similar. She didn't. Maybe that's her failure. Maybe that's the failure of everyone who raised her to see wealth as something to be protected rather than deployed. Either way, it's worth acknowledging.But this isn't a story about what she did or didn't do with her money.This is a story about what the money did to her.And more specifically—what the people around her did because of it.Let me show you what I mean. In December 1998, an Athens court handed down a five-year prison sentence to Thierry Roussel. That's Athina's father. A French businessman. The man who raised her after her mother died when she was three years old. The court sentenced him over disputes connected to his daughter's fortune.
Athina Onassis is alive.She's forty years old. And she's still worth somewhere between five hundred million and one billion dollars.So this is not a story about a woman who lost her fortune.This is a story about what money couldn't protect her from. The vultures who circled her from the moment she was born. The adults who were supposed to shield her—and instead saw her as the biggest payday of their lives.And one of those adults was her own father.With a billion dollars, sympathy is hard to come by. Some of you are already thinking it. She's still richer than anyone watching this will ever be. Cry me a river.Fair point.With a billion dollars, Athina Onassis could have funded medical research that saved thousands of lives. She could have built schools across three continents. MacKenzie Scott gave away fourteen billion dollars and fundamentally changed how billionaires think about philanthropy. Athina could have done something similar. She didn't. Maybe that's her failure. Maybe that's the failure of everyone who raised her to see wealth as something to be protected rather than deployed. Either way, it's worth acknowledging.But this isn't a story about what she did or didn't do with her money.This is a story about what the money did to her.And more specifically—what the people around her did because of it.Let me show you what I mean. In December 1998, an Athens court handed down a five-year prison sentence to Thierry Roussel. That's Athina's father. A French businessman. The man who raised her after her mother died when she was three years old. The court sentenced him over disputes connected to his daughter's fortune.