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The family of Joseph Safra, the late billionaire who was once the world’s wealthiest banker, have settled a bitter global feud over the Lebanese-Brazilian patriarch’s $25bn estate, ending one of the largest-ever inheritance battles that played out in courts from New York to Geneva.
Under an agreement announced on Friday, Joseph’s son Alberto will divest his interests in the dynasty’s business empire. He will also drop explosive claims that his ailing father’s will was unlawfully changed by his mother and siblings when he was no longer compos mentis.
Alberto had argued that Joseph’s last testament was purposely altered to reduce his equal share in the family fortune after he left the Safra group to set up a competing venture, which lawyers for his mother and siblings called “an act of disloyalty and ingratitude”. The allegations of unlawful tampering were strenuously denied by Alberto’s family.
The settlement ends a prolonged, multi-jurisdictional legal fight that has been waged in offices and courtrooms from the US to Switzerland via São Paulo and London. The battle shone a rare spotlight on a private banking brand famed for its discretion in serving the world’s wealthiest individuals.
Representatives for Alberto and the rest of the family declined to provide more details, including whether there had been a financial settlement.
“We are pleased to put this matter behind us and reaffirm our family bonds,” Joseph’s widow Vicky Safra and her children said in a statement. “The resolution we have reached will allow us to pursue our respective business interests in ways that help ensure that the success of every member of our family is a reason for shared satisfaction.”
Alberto Safra said: “I am happy to put that matter behind [me]. After clarifications, I understood that there were no wrongdoings, and that Mr Safra’s estate was properly disposed in accordance to his wishes.”
The statement added that Alberto will pursue his business interests through ASA, the fund management company he founded that had prompted the falling-out with the rest of his family.
Joseph, who died at the age of 82 in December 2020, had a reputation as a patron of the arts and philanthropist who donated to hospitals, schools and the Jewish communities in Brazil and elsewhere to which he belonged. He shunned publicity and rarely gave interviews.
He was the most powerful figure in a banking dynasty whose origins date back 180 years to the financing of trade caravans in Ottoman times. The Safras subsequently established themselves as trusted guardians of the wealth of Beirut’s Sephardic Jewish residents.
A branch of the dynasty moved in the 1950s from Lebanon to São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital, where they laid the foundations for what became Banco Safra, now one of the country’s largest private sector lenders.
The other main financial enterprises under the family’s control are Basel-based J Safra Sarasin, formed by the $1.12bn acquisition of a Swiss institution in 2011, and the Safra National Bank of New York, located on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
The wider J Safra Group conglomerate also owns high-profile real estate such as the “Gherkin” office tower in London, as well as a 50 per cent interest in the banana grower Chiquita.