Stellantis chair John Elkann caught up in $84 million tax evasion case

When it rains it pours for some automakers, it seems. After Stellantis STLA struggled through poor sales, falling profits and calls to sell off their brandsa key figure at the Jeep and Fiat owner is now facing a tax evasion case.

Stellantis and Ferrari chair John Elkann has been named as part of an investigation into alleged tax fraud, reports the Detroit Free Press. Prosecutors in Italy have seized more than $84 million worth of assets from five people, including Elkann, over allegations that they avoided paying inheritance tax in the country. As the Free Press reports:

The investigation, opened earlier this year, alleges Elkann and his siblings Lapo and Ginevra did not pay taxes in Italy on assets they inherited after the death in 2019 of their grandmother Marella Caracciolo, the wife of late Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli.

The case stems from a wider inheritance dispute between the Elkanns and their mother Margherita over the estate of Gianni Agnelli, which has divided one of Italy’s best known business dynasties.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Turin said in a statement that their investigation showed that Caracciolo was a resident in Italy since at least 2010 and not Switzerland, and that his inheritance should therefore have been taxed in Italy.

They said claims she had been based in Switzerland were part of “a criminal plan to hide her substantial assets and related income from Italian inheritance and tax laws.”

In response to the seizure of money and assets worth almost 75 million euros ($84 million), lawyers representing Elkann said this was just a “procedural step in the case” and did not “signal any liability by the defendants.”

The Elkann family instead argue that their grandmother, Marella Caracciolo was a Swiss resident for years before the brothers were born, meaning that they wouldn’t be required to pay inheritance tax in Italy. As such, the lawyers believe they “can prove that our defendants have nothing to do with the facts charged.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift.