Edited by: TJVNews.com
Apparently there is trouble brewing within the ranks of the prestigious Safra family. In December, Joseph Safra, 82, one of the world’s wealthiest bankers, passed away and now one of his sons is presenting challenges to his last will and testament. In a court proceeding in Switzerland, Alberto Safra, 41, who was disinherited from his late father’s massive estate is claiming that his father did not have the mental acuity to execute three new wills in November and December of 2019, according to a Bloomberg News report.
On Thursday, the younger Safra, through his attorney petitioned a New York court to grant him the opportunity to pursue evidence in the United States for his challenge to the will.
His attorney said in court papers filed in Manhattan federal court that, “Mr. Safra was under no condition at that time to voluntarily and knowingly make changes to his wills, let alone changes that would deprive petitioner, a devoted son who had loyally served his father for years in the family business, of his rightful inheritance.
The members of the Safra family, however, have said through a spokesperson that there lacks a basis for presenting a challenge to the existing will of the family patriarch, as was reported by Bloomberg News.
“Mr. Joseph Safra took all the necessary precautions so that his acts of last will were respected,“ according to a statement from the Safra family. “This challenge is an isolated position of only one of the children and does not match the truth of the facts.”
Bloomberg reported that Alberto Safra declined to comment on the nature of the family’s statement.
Alberto is one of the four children of Joseph Safra. Reuters reported that as a member of Brazil’s most prominent Jewish business clan, Joseph Safra was credited with making Banco Safra one of Brazil’s soundest banks. He was deeply involved in Jewish community affairs in Brazil, spending a great deal of his time and fortune funding health, education and charity projects and paying for the construction of synagogues and community centers.
In August of 2020, Forbes reported Safra’s estimated net worth at $22.8 billion.
According to a 2012 Business Insider report in 2011, Safra bought Bank Sarasin, a private bank in Switzerland, from Rabobank of the Netherlands, for $1.1 billion. He also bought office space in Manhattan’s 660 Madison Avenue building for $285 million.
“Every bank is like a child –- you have to nurture it so it is able to grow and thrive,“ Joseph Safra said in a Safra Sarasin earnings report released in 2020, according to a report on Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg News reported that at the time of his death, the billionaire’s extensive holdings included a stake in banana company Chiquita Brands International, the Gherkin, a Norman Foster-designed skyscraper in central London and a 130-room mansion in Sao Paulo.
Bloomberg News reported that in Sao Paulo, the Albert Einstein and Sirio-Libanes hospitals counted Safra as a key donor. In addition to building synagogues, Safra contributed to Jewish causes through the Joseph Safra Foundation, and donated Auguste Rodin sculptures to a Brazilian museum, as was reported by Bloomberg News.
Safra had been battling with illness for some time and his three sons — Jacob, David and Alberto — were gradually taking on larger roles within the business, according to the Bloomberg News report. In 2019, Alberto decided to split from the lender to launch his own venture, ASA Investments, a Sao Paulo-based asset-management firm with about 90 employees and offices in Rio de Janeiro and New York.
Now, Jacob, the oldest, runs the international side of the operations, while David oversees the Brazilian firm. Bloomberg reported that Safra’s daughter, Esther is an educator and runs a school in Sao Paulo.
Alberto left the Safra business in Brazil “under a lot of pressure from his family,” he said in the court documents, according to the Bloomberg report. He took with him several high-ranking Safra executives, straining the relationship with his siblings further.
According to court papers, just weeks after Alberto left the family business, the elder Safra “hastily changed his wills in order to cut the petitioner off from his rightful inheritance and, correspondingly, increase the petitioner’s siblings’ share of the late Joseph Safra estate.”
Court documents indicate that lion’s share of Joseph Safra’s assets were already donated to his wife, Vicky Safra, and his children while he was alive. Bloomberg reported that this means Alberto has already received some of the family’s fortune. According to a person familiar with the case, the donations started more than a decade ago and include shares of Banco Safra in Brazil, which Alberto still owns, as was reported by Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg reported that Alberto has claimed that the revisions in his father’s will were made as a result of “undue influence of individuals who exploited Joseph Safra’s vulnerable physical and mental condition,” according to the court documents. He said he learned about the changes only after his father died.
“In this context, certain family members began retaliating against the petitioner by opposing his attempts to visit his father, isolating him from the various family businesses and, as he later found out, taking decisions to harm his rights,” according to the documents.
