Gina Lollobrigida, who died on Monday aged 95, led a colourful life by all accounts. She leaves behind not just a fascinating legacy – an Italian screen siren turned photojournalist, artist and politician – but a complicated legal conundrum, amid questions over the future of her estate.
In 2021, it was reported that the supreme Court of Cassation had ruled a legal guardian should be appointed to look after Lollobrigida’s wealth. The decision came following a request from her only child, Milko Skofic Jr, her son with Slovenian physician Milko Skofic Sr, to whom she was married between 1949 and 1971. The court ruled that due to her state of ‘vulnerability’ (she was then aged 94) a third party should help manage her affairs.
The Times now reports, however, that there are a number of claimants to her property in the wake of her death, as well as speculation that some of her fortune could even have been spent already without her awareness.
Her significant estate should include a villa on the Appian Way in southeast Italy, an apartment in Rome, a Monte Carlo flat and a shop in the Tuscan town of Pietrasanta, as well as antique furniture, jewellery and works by Flemish, Roman and Russian painters.
One party with a stake in the proceedings is Spanish businessman Javier Rigau i Ràfols, to whom Lollobrigida became engaged in 2006, aged 79. The engagement was called off, but Rigau is said to have later married her ‘by proxy’ in 2010. Lollobrigida launched legal action against him three years later, alleging he had staged a secret ceremony in which he apparently wed an imposter masquerading as the Italian star.
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She told the press: ‘This vile person married me by proxy, without my knowledge and without my permission, in order to inherit my estate after my death… A while ago he convinced me to give him my power of attorney… Who knows what he had me sign.’ Rigau was, however, acquitted of fraud by a Spanish court in 2017.
He reportedly told the Italian press this week: ‘I won’t inherit anything, but there should be an investigation into Gina’s assets because her patrimony has disappeared.’ Rigau also said he was planning to attend his former wife’s funeral, taking place in Rome on Thursday, and had been invited to deliver a eulogy by her son, who himself became estranged from his mother in her later years.
However, journalist and producer Adriano Aragozzini, a long-time friend of Lollobrigida’s, was reportedly less enthused. He is said to have argued with Rigau on a visit to the clinic in Rome where the late actress died, stating: ‘We quarrelled immediately… because he said to me, with a certain aggressiveness, “You must keep away from this woman, because she has been robbed”.’
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Her secretary and companion for the last 13 years, 34-year-old Andrea Piazzolla, is said to have shared a genuine affection with the 1950s pin-up. Even this, however, appears to be contested, with accusations that Piazzolla took advantage of her mental vulnerability in later life. He is due to appear in court on Friday, with prosecutors accusing him of embezzling €3 million between 2013 and 2018. Lollobrigida previously denied that he was defrauding her.
