The Downfall of Europe’s Youngest Billionaire: The End of Athina Onassis’ Empire D
Picture this. You’re 18 years old and you wake up controlling billions of dollars. Private islands, a jet, bank accounts in every corner of the world. Sounds like a dream, right? But what if that same fortune came with a curse? What if everyone you trusted was lying to you? What if the money that should have protected you became the weapon used to destroy everything you loved? This is the story of how one of the world’s youngest billionaires lost it all and why the ending might not be what you expect, the golden Greeks legacy. To understand Athena Onases, you first have to understand the empire she inherited. Her grandfather, Aristotle Onases, arrived in Buenos Aes in 1923 as a Greek refugee who’d fled Smyrna. He was 17, practically penniless, working as a telephone engineer, but he was clever. He
eavesdropped on business calls, learned who was making deals, and used that information to set up his own arrangements. By 25, Aristotle had turned his audacity into a tobacco fortune. Then, in the middle of the Great Depression, when everyone else was abandoning shipping, he bought six cargo ships for half their value.
During World War II, he registered his fleet in Panama for tax advantages and struck deals with the US government. By war’s end, Aristotle Onases controlled the world’s largest privatelyowned shipping fleet. The empire he built was staggering. The Olympic Tower in Manhattan, investments across four continents, the island of Scorpios, Olympic Airways, the legendary yacht Christina O deposit, accounts in 217 banks worldwide.
When Aristotle passed away on March 15th, 1975, his fortune was estimated at $500 million, $2.3 billion adjusted for inflation. But money couldn’t protect the Onasis family from tragedy. Aristotle’s son, Alexander, being groomed as the heir to the empire, was killed in a plane crash in Athens on January 23rd, 1973.
He was only 24 years old. Aristotle never recovered from losing his son. The devastation destroyed his health and he died 2 years later. His daughter Christina, Athena’s mother, inherited 55% of the fortune. The remaining 45% went to the Alexander S.
Onases Foundation, established in memory of the son who would never take over the family business. Aristotle’s widow, Jquelin Kennedy Onases, received $26 million in a settlement. Christina Onasses was 24 when her father died. suddenly thrust into running a global shipping empire. She was brilliant in business, successfully managing the Onassis companies.
But her personal life was chaotic. She married four times, struggled with weight issues throughout her life, battled substance problems, and could never seem to find happiness despite having access to unlimited wealth. Her relationships with her father’s widow, Jackie Kennedy, had been strained from the start.
Christina and her brother Alexander had referred to Jackie as the gold digger and never warmed to the former first lady. The pressure of being an Onasis was immense. The name opened every door, but it also came with impossible expectations, and sometimes it attracted people who wanted access to the fortune rather than the person.
But what happened to Christina would pale in comparison to what her daughter would face. Because when you inherit billions as a toddler, the vultures start circling before you even understand what money means. But even as Christina struggled with her own challenges, she found moments of hope. In 1984, she married French pharmaceutical heir Thierry Rousel.
He came from wealth himself, so maybe this time it would be different. Maybe he wanted her, not just her billions. On January 29th, 1985, Christina gave birth to a daughter at the American Hospital of Paris in Nien. They named her Aina Helen Rousel after Christina’s own mother, Athena, called Tina, who died years earlier.
The baby was baptized on the island of Scorpios, the family’s private paradise where generations of Onasses would be laid to rest. For Christina, this tiny baby represented everything. A fresh start, a chance to build something better than the troubled life she’d known. A daughter who might finally break the curse that seemed to follow the Onassis name.
Maybe this time things would be different. They weren’t. The marriage didn’t last. Tierry Rousel had been having an affair with Swedish model Marianne Gabby Lond during his marriage to Christina. While still married to Christina, Gabby gave birth to two of Thierry’s children. Think about that. He was married to one woman while fathering children with another.
Christina and Thierry divorced in 1987 when Athena was just 2 years old. The betrayal devastated Christina. Here was another person who’d seemed different but turned out to be the same as all the others. Another person more interested in access to the Onassis world than in her.
But Christina learned from her painful experiences. She never trusted Rouselle with the family money. Not after what he’d done. She arranged for a board of administrators to control the fortune until Athena came of age. The trustees she selected were Greek businessmen she’d known for years.
Stellio Papaditriu, Paul Yoanidis, Apostolos Zabelas, and Theodore Gabrielides. She wanted to make sure that if anything happened to her, the money would be protected. That if something went wrong, her daughter would be taken care of by people who understood the weight of the Onasis legacy.
She set up structures, legal protections, fail safes. She tried to think of everything that could go wrong. On November 19th, 1988, Christina’s maid found her body in a bathtub at a friend’s mansion in Tortugas outside Buenosire, Argentina. She was 37 years old. An autopsy revealed that Christina had suffered a heart attack caused by acute pulmonary edema.
There was no evidence of intentional harm, substance use that day, or anything suspicious. But the finding did little to ease speculation. Christina had reportedly struggled with dependency issues in the past, and her life had been marked by extraordinary stress and personal turmoil. Four marriages, constant battles with her weight, the pressure of managing a billion dollar empire, the loneliness of never knowing if people loved her for who she was or for her bank account. A private Greek Orthodox funeral was held on November 20th at a chapel on Scorpios. Christina was buried in the Onasses family plot alongside her father Aristotle and her brother Alexander. Little Athena was only 3 years old. She’d lost her mother and with Christina’s passing, she became the last
living direct descendant of Aristotle Onasses. The entire multi-billion dollar fortune now belonged to a toddler who couldn’t possibly understand what any of it meant. She couldn’t understand that her life would never be normal again. She couldn’t understand that the fortune meant to protect her would become the source of nearly every problem she’d face.
But the real nightmare was just beginning. Because when a three-year-old inherits billions, the question isn’t just who will raise her. It’s who will control the money. A childhood in a gilded cage. After Christina’s passing, Tierry Rousel took custody of Athena and moved her to Switzerland.
He later married Gabby Landhark, the woman he’d had an affair with during his marriage to Christina, the same woman whose presence had destroyed his marriage to Athena’s mother. Athena grew up with two half siblings from her father’s relationship with Gabby, plus an older halfsister from an earlier relationship.
The blended family settled in Lucy Suge, Switzerland, where Rousel made it clear he wanted to give Athena what he called a normal childhood. But calling anything about Athena’s life normal would be a joke. Under the terms Christina had established before her death, Thierry Rousel couldn’t access Athena’s inheritance freely.
The Greek trustees controlled the money with an iron fist, and every single expenditure Rousel made on Athena’s behalf required the board’s approval. Want to buy his daughter a new dress? He had to get permission. Want to pay for a family vacation? The trustees had to sign off.
want to upgrade their living situation. Approval needed. The daughter was worth billions, but her father had to beg for money to raise her. Imagine that for a moment. Having to ask permission to spend money on your own child, knowing that child is one of the wealthiest people on earth, this arrangement created constant bitter tension.
Rouselle felt humiliated, having to go to the board like a child asking for allowance. He threatened repeatedly to move back to France, where Greek law wouldn’t apply and the trustees would lose some control. More importantly, the estate would have to pay much higher taxes in France, something the trustees desperately wanted to avoid.
It was a standoff that lasted throughout Athena’s childhood with her father and the men who controlled her money locked in an ongoing battle and young Athena was caught in the middle watching the adults around her fight over billions she couldn’t even comprehend. The situation became so contentious that in 1999 when Athina was 13 a court in Vadus Liestein made a significant change.
The management of Athena’s inheritance was transferred from the Greek trustees to KPMG Fights, an auditing firm in Lucern, Switzerland. The change was meant to bring more professionalism and less personal conflict to managing the young Aerys’s fortune. But by this point, the damage was done.
Around this time, Athena gave an interview that revealed just how much she’d come to resent her heritage. At 13 years old, she stated that she felt immense dislike toward anything Greek. In one of her few public statements published in the Italian magazine Auggie, she explained that she blamed all the problems in her life on the Onasis name, her stepmother, Gabby later appeared on the American television show 2020 and shared something even more startling. According to Gabby, Athena had told her that if she could burn all the Onasis money, she would do it without hesitation. Set it all on fire and walk away. Think about that for a moment. Here was a teenage girl who would inherit billions, who would become one of the wealthiest people on Earth, and she wished she could destroy it all. The money that millions of people dreamed
about, that people would do anything for, that represented security and freedom and unlimited possibility. Athena saw it as a curse. She associated the Onasis name with the loss of her mother at 3 years old, with the constant battles between her father and the trustees, with never being able to live a normal life, with security concerns and people who wanted to be close to her fortune rather than to her. The billions weren’t a blessing.
They were a prison. But Athena found one escape, horses. She’d begun riding as a child, and she discovered that in the world of showj jumping, she could be judged on her skill rather than her bank account. She started competing in events, working her way up through the ranks. In 2001, at just 16 years old, she finished second in an event in Jerz, Spain.
The equestrian world would become her refuge, the one place where she felt she could build an identity separate from the weight of her family name. When she was on a horse clearing jumps, she wasn’t the Onasis Aerys. She was just Athena, an athlete working to master her craft. Still, she couldn’t fully escape who she was.
January 29th, 2003 was approaching her 18th birthday. And on that date, everything would change because that’s when the money would finally be hers. But would controlling billions make her life better? Or would it make everything so much worse? Billions at 18? On January 29th, 2003, Athena Onases turned 18.
Under the terms of her mother’s estate, control of Christina’s inheritance transferred to Athena on her 18th birthday. Overnight, she gained access to an estimated 2.7 billion in assets. Let that sink in for a moment. At 18, when most people are worried about college applications or their first job, Athena woke up controlling the Olympic Tower in New York.
companies spread across multiple continents, a fleet of tankers, two Greek islands, priceless artwork, a private jet, real estate worth half a billion, deposits of $40 million in US accounts and $90 million in Latin American banks, another $200 million in corporate investments, unknown additional sums in Swiss banks, and those 217 bank accounts her grandfather had maintained all over the world.
The global media declared Athena one of the youngest billionaires in history. In Greece, she was referred to as a national treasure, the last living link to Aristotle Onases’s legendary empire. Financial analysts speculated about what she would do with the fortune. Would she follow in her grandfather’s footsteps and expand the shipping business? Would she become a philanthropist? Would she sell everything and disappear? The world was watching, waiting to see what this young woman would do with unimaginable wealth. But there was a catch that most people didn’t understand. While Athena now controlled her mother’s portion of the fortune, she didn’t control everything. The other half of the Onasis legacy, the 45% that Aristotle had left to the Alexander S. Sonasis Foundation was supposed to transfer to Athena’s control when she
turned 21. At that age, she was meant to become president of the foundation, giving her authority over the entire Onasis Empire, not just half of it. That had been Aristotle’s plan when he set up the foundation. His heir would run everything. As Athena’s 21st birthday approached in 2006, her lawyers prepared for her to assume the presidency of the foundation as Aristotle had intended.
It seemed like a formality. She was the last living Onassis. Who else would lead the foundation? But the foundation’s board had other plans. And what they did would send a message that would echo through the rest of Athena’s life. You may have the money, but you don’t belong here. The foundation fight and falling in love.
The Alexander S. Onases Foundation wasn’t just a charitable organization. It represented nearly half of Aristotle’s fortune and carried enormous prestige in Greece. For decades, the foundation had funded scholarships, medical research, and cultural programs throughout Greece.
Taking leadership of it meant more than just controlling money. It meant stepping into the role of the Onases family’s public face in Greece, representing the legacy Aristotle had built. In 2005, just months before Athena would turn 21, the board made a shocking move. They changed the foundation’s charter, removing Athena’s automatic right to become chairman on her 21st birthday.
The board members argued that Athena had no real connection to Greek culture. She didn’t speak Greek fluently. She’d been raised in Switzerland and France, speaking French and English. She’d publicly stated her dislike for Greece when she was 13. She had no university degree and no relevant work experience. She’d never lived in Greece, never worked there, never shown any particular interest in Greek culture or philanthropy.
How could someone so disconnected from Greece lead a Greek foundation? Athena’s lawyers fought the decision hard, but they lost. The board’s arguments prevailed in court. Athena would never take her intended position as president of the foundation. It was a bitter public defeat. The rejection stung particularly deeply because it came from Greek administrators who questioned whether she was Greek enough, whether she deserved her own family’s legacy.
She’d been told her whole life that she was the heir to the Onasis Empire. Now the Greeks themselves were saying she didn’t measure up, she had the name, she had the money, but she didn’t have the right to lead. The foundation and its resources remained outside her authority. She would never fully control the complete Onasis Empire the way her grandfather and mother had.
For someone who’d spent her entire childhood being told she was special because of her bloodline, being rejected by her grandfather’s own foundation must have been devastating. She wasn’t Greek enough. She wasn’t qualified. She wasn’t welcome. But by this time, Athena’s attention was increasingly focused elsewhere.
She’d met someone, and for the first time in her life, she thought she’d found someone who wanted her for her, not for her billions. Through the show jumping circuit, she’d met a Brazilian rider named Alvaro Aonso De Miranda. Everyone called him Doda. He was 12 years older than Athena, an Olympic class equestrian who’d won bronze medals for Brazil in both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics.
He was charming, successful in his own right, and he shared Athena’s passion for horses. They’d known each other for years through competitions, seeing each other at events around the world. Athena fell hard. For the first time, she felt she’d found someone who understood her, someone who loved her for who she was rather than what she was worth.
Doda had his own career, his own accomplishments, his own Olympic medals. He wasn’t some unknown person trying to access her billions. He was a respected athlete in the equestrian world. That made him seem safe. That made him seem different from everyone else who’d ever wanted something from her.
Finally, someone who got it. Someone who understood the pressure, the competition, the love of horses. Someone who wanted Athena, not the Onasses fortune. Together, they established AD Sport Horses, a horse breeding and training business based in Florus, Belgium.
The company name combined their initials, a symbol of the partnership they were building, both personal and professional. They’d breed champion horses together, compete together, build an empire within the equestrian world together. It was everything Athena had ever wanted. A life built around her passion shared with someone she loved.
But Athena’s father saw danger lurking. He’d been through his own contentious relationship with Christina, and he recognized warning signs. Rouselle attempted to tighten control over Athena’s inheritance, but Athena saw something different. She saw her father trying to control her life the same way the trustees had throughout her childhood.
She’d finally found happiness, found someone she wanted to build a life with. And here came her father trying to interfere again. The teenager who’d once wished she could burn all the Onasis money now took decisive legal action. She sued Thierry Rousel to remove his influence over her finances.
The legal battle was bruising and public and Athena won. But winning meant destroying whatever relationship remained with her father. On December 3rd, 2005, Athena and Doda married in S. Paulo in a lavish ceremony under tight security. Most guests were Brazilian VIPs or friends from the equestrian world.
Notably absent were Athena’s father and stepmother. The family rift was complete. Shortly after, Athena changed her name to Athena Onases Deiranda, taking her husband’s name, binding their identities together. They bought a massive ranch in Brazil, invested heavily in their horse business, and established the Athena Onassis International Horse Show.
For Athena, it represented her attempt to build something of her own, something that mattered beyond just having money. From the outside, it looked perfect. The billionaires and the Olympic champion. But underneath, something was very, very wrong. And it would take 11 years for the truth to come out. The affair that destroyed everything.
In 2016, Athena and Doda were living in Wellington, Florida. They’d purchased a 5.6 acre estate there in 2014 for $12 million. One night, Athena’s security team found Doda in bed with another woman at their Florida home. According to reports, Doda begged the guards not to tell Athena, but they had a duty to their employer.
When Athena learned the truth, she immediately packed and left for Belgium. The 11-year marriage was over. Doda initially denied problems. But by June 2016, his spokeswoman admitted they’d separated. Then the full truth emerged. Alexis Manthiacis, a close friend of the Onasses family, came forward with shocking revelations.
A Belgian woman who’d worked as an escort approached him with a file containing hotel bills, flight records, credit card statements, documentation proving Doda had been carrying on this relationship for 8 years of his 11-year marriage. According to the woman’s account, it took her 5 years to realize who Doda was married to.
In 2011, watching horse jumping on television, she recognized him. Rather than ending it, Doda brought her deeper into his life, taking her to events, even the Athena Onases horse show in Rio. He confided about his marriage, including why Athena had stopped talking to her father. The woman said Athena had no idea about the betrayal happening for nearly their entire marriage.
The divorce turned ugly. Proceedings took place in Belgium. Doda challenged the prenuptual agreement, demanding $11 million based on its terms, $350,000 in monthly alimony, payment for joint ventures, and custody of their horses. In total, his initial claims amounted to approximately $400 million.
Athena’s legal team presented the evidence documenting Dota’s infidelity. When the Belgian court finally ruled in November 2017, Athena walked away with her fortune largely intact. Doda received significantly less than the $400 million he’d sought. German magazine Bonte declared he got almost nothing.
For Athena, the betrayal represented another loss. Her mother gone at three, her father distant after legal battles, denied her position at the family foundation. And now a marriage that consumed 11 years revealed as largely fraudulent. But the financial impact would prove devastating in ways she couldn’t have anticipated. The crumbling empire.
When Athena turned 18 in 2003, analysts estimated her net worth at $2.3 billion, possibly as high as $5 billion. By 2017, when her divorce was finalized, reports suggested it had shrunk to less than $500 million. How does someone lose that much? The answer involves multiple factors that slowly drained the family fortune.
First, her passion for horses. Show jumping at the highest level is extraordinarily expensive. Top horses can cost $5 million, $10 million or more. Then there’s training, boarding, transportation, veterinary care, breeding programs, staff, competition fees, and worldclass facilities. Athena built an empire within the sport.
Ad Sport Horses, the International Horse Show, multiple properties, the ranch in Brazil, the Wellington estate. Unlike her grandfather’s revenue generating shipping business, the equestrian investments were primarily expenses. Second, the divorce. While Athena paid Doda far less than he sought, legal fees with high-profile attorneys working through complex international proceedings likely ran into millions.
More significantly, 11 years of marriage had intertwined finances and joint business ventures that had to be separated. Some reports suggested the divorce process cost Atheina upwards of $100 million. Third, the ongoing cost of being Atheina Onasses. Security wasn’t optional.
Bodyguards, bulletproof SUVs, 24/7 protection against kidnapping attempts. Properties worldwide required maintenance, staff, and taxes. The private jet needed pilots, fuel, hanger fees, maintenance. Even unused assets continued generating costs. Fourth, investments that didn’t perform well.
She attempted business ventures that failed. The 2008 financial crisis likely impacted her portfolio. Unlike Aristotle, who’d built his fortune through shrewd deals and aggressive expansion, Athena focused on horses, not growing wealth. By 2010, Athena began selling assets. Most famously in 2013, she sold Scorpios, the family island where Aristotle, Alexander, and Christina were buried, to Russian billionaires, Ekatarina Ryolovver for a rumored $150 million.
Aristotle had purchased it for the equivalent of around $12,000. The sale meant extraordinary profit, but also giving up the place that defined the Onases family for generations. In 2017, she sold the Wellington estate. Reports emerged of other holdings being liquidated. By 2024, estimates placed her net worth between 500 million and $1 billion.
Still wealthy, but a fraction of what she’d inherited. The empire Aristotle built over his lifetime was reduced dramatically in just 15 years. Today, at 39 years old, Athena Onasses lives a quiet, private life, largely out of the public eye. She makes rare public appearances, mostly at equestrian events.
She’s reconnected with Greece, learning the language she once rejected and attempting to understand the heritage she spent much of her youth resenting. She was spotted at a wedding in Monte Carlo in 2021, but photographs from the event showed a woman who bore little resemblance to the young he who’d once graced magazine covers.
Friends who’ve known her describe someone who’s been through tremendous pain, who carries the weight of a legendary name while trying to build something authentic of her own. The Onasis shipping empire, once the largest privatelyowned fleet in the world, has been largely dismantled or sold.
The real estate portfolio has shrunk. The companies Aristotle built have been dissolved or transferred. The 217 bank accounts are down to a small fraction of that. The fortune that was supposed to last generations has been dramatically reduced in a single lifetime. And the woman at the center of it all, the last living direct descendant of Aristotle Onasses, seems to have found something more valuable than money.
The freedom to live on her own terms, away from the spotlight that defined and damaged so much of her life. the price of a name. There’s something deeply tragic about Athena Onases’s story, but it’s not what most people might expect. It’s not squandering a fortune on recklessness.
It’s the tragedy of a child who inherited a burden disguised as a blessing. Think about what Athena never got to choose. She didn’t choose to be born an Onases. She didn’t choose to lose her mother at three. She didn’t choose to have her childhood controlled by businessmen managing her money. She didn’t choose to grow up knowing people wanted her fortune more than they wanted to know her.
She didn’t choose to become one of the world’s youngest billionaires with all the pressure that brought. What Athena chose was horses. It was the one thing she picked for herself, the one passion that came from her heart rather than others expectations. And even that became complicated when she married Doda, intertwining her passion with wealth in ways that made it impossible to separate what was authentic from what was transactional.
The Onasis name, which should have been a source of pride, became something Athena wanted to burn. And you can understand why. The fortune didn’t save her mother. It didn’t prevent her uncle’s death. It didn’t protect her from estrangement with her father. It didn’t buy a happy marriage.
It didn’t prevent betrayal or heartbreak. What the fortune did was attract predators. It created suspicion. Was anyone in her life there for Athena or for Onases money? It generated constant security concerns. It meant living behind guards and bulletproof glass. It meant never being certain of others motivations.
And slowly the fortune evaporated. Hundreds of millions on horses. Hundreds of millions in failed investments and business ventures. Hundreds of millions in legal battles and divorce settlements. The empire Aristotle built over his lifetime was reduced to a fraction in just 15 years.
Some might say Athena squandered her inheritance. But those critics miss the point. Athena didn’t want the money in the first place. She said she would burn it if she could. And in a way, that’s exactly what she did. She sold off pieces of the empire, including the family island where her mother and grandfather were buried.
She liquidated assets, simplified her life. Today, Athena may have far less money than she inherited, but she also has something she never had. Relative freedom. Freedom to live quietly without the pressure of managing billions. Freedom to pursue her passion without fraudulent entanglements. Freedom to be Athena rather than the last Onasis heir carrying a legendary name’s weight.
The story of Athena Onasis isn’t really about money. It’s about the price of inheriting a legacy you never asked for. It’s about trying to build an authentic life when everything is defined by your last name and bank account. It’s about the curse that sometimes comes with legendary fortunes.
The way money can’t prevent tragedy, can’t guarantee happiness, can’t protect you from betrayal, and can’t buy genuine human connection built on something other than wealth. The empire is gone. The fortune has dwindled. But Aina Onases is still here, still riding horses, still trying to build a life that makes sense to her.
And maybe losing the billions was the price she had to pay to finally find something resembling peace. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe to our channel so you never miss out on more fascinating stories.