Grubstakers - Episode 171: Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli, L'Avvocato ("The Lawyer")

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

On this episode we cover the Italian stallion the lawyer with no law practice under his belt Gianni Agnelli. We cover how he was born with wealth from his grandfather, which included a 20 year long bender enjoying the exciting life of international playboy. This episode features such known guest stars as Winston Churchill, Mussolini, Gaddafi and Henry Kissinger they are all apart the Italian conspiracy to keep Italy “Italian.” Find out how the newest generation of Agnelli’s are continuing the tradition of abusing drugs, having sex with whomever they please as well as robbing the country of Italy blind with connections to unsavory characters that would make your Nonna say, “That’s not how you make a Sicilian pizza pie you just making a mess mama mia!”

It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke. I look at this system and say, yeah, you know, what's going on? I don't know anything about this man except I've read bad stuff about him. And I don't like, you know, I don't like what I read about him. We are more than just one coin. We create the world around this coin. Cop. Invention. Cop. Cop. The advertising works on me.

Alright. The evil has gone. Hey everyone, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast works on me. Alright. The evil has gone. Hey everyone, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. Today I'm joined by my wonderful co-hosts. Andy Palmer. Sean P. McCarthy. Steve Jeffers. And today we're going to be talking about the affectionately known avocado, Gianni Anghiani.

A man who was born into a life of luxury, and as he lost family members closest to him, he would live a life of excess that would come to define Italian excellence. Gianni Anghiani would become the quintessential idea of what it meant to have Italian style, an international playboy, a daredevil in his own right, and a man who would never emotionally heal from his losses in childhood and how it would eventually be his own undoing by the end of his life. You make it sound like he's Batman. I mean, I do think that for a period he definitely lived a Batman-esque life.

He's Bruce Wayne. Oh, I was just going to say, like, losses during childhood. Well, he, you you know we'll talk about it more in this episode but i think first of all like do you guys even know uh the this family existed well uh no but i do think that it's important in this time when all these christopher columbus statues are getting pulled down that we celebrate italian excellence i will say that uh that print run they did where batman commits war crimes on the Eastern Front was very unpopular. And a Guinea Batman committing war crimes on the Eastern Front was not well received, but in posterity it holds up.

Hey Joker, I'm Batman over here. yes he definitely lived a life that i think that uh as i watched the hbo documentary on yeni about his life i certainly felt both envious and then not so envious by the end of it of what this man's life would become to give everyone an overview of the family themselves. This is from Wikipedia. The Agnani family is an Italian multi-industry business dynasty founded by Giovanni Agnani, the grandfather of the individual we're covering today, one of the original founders of Fiat Motor Company, which became Italy's largest manufacturer,

Fabrica Italiana Automobile Torino. They are also primarily known for other activities in the automotive industry by investing in Ferrari, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, and Chrysler, the latter acquired by Fiat after it filed for bankruptcy in 2009. The Agnini family is also known for managing and being majority owners of the Italian series A football club Juventus FC. Since the club's conversion to a public limited company in 1967, most members of the family are stakeholders in privately owned Giovanni and Yenny BV, incorporated in the Netherlands for tax purposes, which only happened within the last 10 years, which in turn has a controlling stake in the publicly listed holding company, Exor. They are rumored to having around $11 to $13 billion.

No one really knows how much money they have, actually. I mean, they certainly have all those companies, but the amount of money the entire empire has is not necessarily known. Steven, you looked into Exor, their financial arm? Yeah, so Exor is privately held by Giovanni Agnelli BV. It's among the largest such privately held groups in the world in terms of gross revenue. It's the 24th largest in the world,

and has revenue of $144 billion. It has total assets of $172.6 billion as of 2019. They own stakes. Some of their major stakes that they hold are the Economist Group, the Economist Magazine. They own 43.4% share

and 20% of the voting rights they also well fiat chrysler automobiles which we'll get into so they must have made a lot of money off their share of the economist magazine when coronavirus caused toilet paper shortages throughout the nation they've been raking it in with all of the hot takes about how will COVID change IT workplaces or something. COVID-19 is at a crossroads. This XOR also is the group that holds Juventus FC, the Italian soccer team. They have a 63% share of that. They also own a string of like transportation and healthcare and pharmaceutical companies.

One such company is called Via Transportation Inc. It's an American transportation network company. It does like real-time ride sharing in cities like New York City and Chicago. What's that called? Via. Oh, they own a part of Via. Interesting. They do own Via.

There's also a company called TruLink. Yeah, that was Via Transportation. And then there's another company called TruLink, which is a financial services firm that got quite a bit of venture capital money from silicon valley well via is one of those ride share companies that did the thing that every other ride share company did which is we're slightly better than uber so you should support us yeah yeah it was so yeah they invested in via as sort of like when it was known as like the woke alternative to uber so in terms of ride sharing they're like the closest to what i think everyone wants and in the form of like a worker controlled app side note i don't know why taxi drivers don't just pool money to have to develop their own app

oh yeah i mean like curb exists but even that is like uh wrapped in red tape uh with the tlc in new york and in other cities as well i don't know why i mean like you know it's frustrating i remember when i first moved to new york and lyft and uber at the time were banned and then like within a year or two uh at first it was like they're only gonna allow a thousand people to drive uber and then very quickly it was like actually no that's gonna be however many as it want and it really kind of gutted the entire industry from the taxi medallions going from selling you know 900 000 to a million dollars to just crashing immediately yeah so via is a part of why that there was a crash in the medallion market. But for some recent news for Exor, they had put in a bid to buy the reinsurance company partner Ray for $140 a share and it was about to go through at about for about nine billion um that fell through

recently and their stock price took quite a hit from that so they've had some like a few tales of woe like that recently in the last three years i believe we'll get into their ceo john philip John Philip Elkin? Yes. This is one of the grandchildren of Gianni Agnelli. Right. I'm going to wholeheartedly admit I'm going to mispronounce many Italian names during this episode. So it's finally time for the brown guy

on the show to mispronounce white names. No, these are Italian names, Yogi. Yeah, well, they're close enough to me if you know what I mean. I think to soften the blow, you should do it in a wildly offensive accent. Let's see. Andrea Agnelli is a director on the board for XOR. Right.

He is also the head of Juventus. And I know that many of our soccer fans will be disappointed that we're not going to cover juvantis that much during this episode because i don't know soccer sucks and we're americans no i'm just kidding but like this episode had a lot to uh deal with in terms of fiat and uh later on gaddafi as well as uh several other mob connections that we're going to be talking about on this episode no yeah there's a reason why whenever we cover or most of the time we cover someone like uh with sports connections we bring in a guest who actually uh understands like the politics of sports because whenever we try to talk about it on our own we're like i don't know there's like a player and they didn't pay him well i think

the team seems to be not good no there No, there definitely is a mob connection. It's not too convoluted, but we'll get into that. It's with Gervantes in 2014. Some of their senior management, including Agnelli, were investigated by a prosecutor's office in Turin on the management of tickets at one of their stadiums. Interesting. So we're not going to cover their promotion

where they gave the first 10,000 fans a banana to throw at the foreign players? In 2014, some of Juventus' senior management, including Agnelli, were investigated by a justice office in Turin on the management of tickets at their Juventus's senior management including on yelly were investigated by a justice office in turin on the management of tickets at their juventus stadium about the alleged infiltration of the negron gata or southern branch of the mafia in the commercial management of the company's like ticket ticket booth negron gata or however you pronounce it i'm sure we're fucking it up but

they're the the mafia that controls calabria which is the the province on the southernmost tip of italy whereas lacosa nostra this is the most famous one they control sicily the island off the southern tip of italy but people a lot of people say that lacosa nostra has been overtaken by these mobsters in calabria and they are actually, by a lot of different estimates, the most powerful organized crime force in Europe. Also fascinating tidbit, La Cosa Nostra, it means the thing of, or it means the, our thing, which doesn't make any sense.

And the reason people call it that is it's really just Cosa but uh j edgar hoover was a dumbass and when the um fbi was looking into it he just pushed that name he just liked that sound yeah hoover sucked so like it was it was alleged that they're using the ticket offices to launder money or uh derive some like passive income for the mob through those booths interesting well but yeah to to pull back a bit the agnelli family uh really obviously has been so plugged into italian politics for more than 100 years now you have to imagine that they have always had these connections with both the mafia and the political class. Because, you know, we talk about fiat that was first founded in like 1899. And then they're plugged into the Mussolini government. And then,

you know, by the 80s, they're like a power within themselves in the Italian state. And we'll get to all that. But know mafia connections political bribery none of this stuff should should surprise you when it comes to one of the most powerful billionaire italian families so on march 18th 2017 following a investigation and opening up a lawsuit by one of the prosecutors prosecutors, Agnelli was referred by the attorney general along with the other three club executives for a trial. So following that in September, the attorney general reformulated its allegations excluding a presumed mafia association with the members of the incriminated club after the prosecutor giuseppe pocoraro's intervention to the anti-mafia commission in april so the prosecutor was asked for sanctions for the

meetings of agnelli with um so-called ultra groups and the sale of the tickets by the rest of the offenders beyond the limit allowed for one person so it's our otherwise it's an avenue for ticket scalping which they're more strict on in italy right on the 25th of september onyeli was banned for one year and fined 20 000 euros while juventus were fined 300 000 euros for selling tickets to these ultra groups, which I don't know quite what these groups are, but it sounds like they are just like a hidden tier of stadium goers who get special privileges that we don't.

And there are a few other grandkids to Gianni Angelli's empire that are the current heirs to the dynasty. The main ones are John Elkin, who was given the golden keys to the Fiat Empire just before Gianni's death. Lapo Elkin, who has battled drug addiction. He's been involved in a handful of sex scandals and now designs sunglasses and cars. He's a major chode. He kind of has, I don't know the actor's name but in the first spider-man the green goblin he sounds like that guy yeah i don't know what's

going on with him but motherfuckers lived a weird life and their sister ginevra who is a director and artist who manages the angeli museum in turid the home base for fiat and angeli's uh and the Angelis. And they have a cousin, Andrea Angeli, who runs the Luvanta Soccer, as Stephen was just talking about. So this multi-billion dollar family was solidified as a family unit, except that after Gianni Angeli's death, where his only living daughter, Margarita, began to question the evaluation of her father's net worth. This is from the Vanity Fair piece, The Woman Who Wanted the Secrets. Margarita Agnelli de Palen, the daughter of Gianni Angeli, was skeptical when her father's will at first was read without her present.

The bulk of shares from her mother, Gianni's wife, were given to Margarita's son, their grandson, John, which then would nullify any of Margarita's other children from her second marriage. So essentially what was going on there was Gianni Angeli's daughter had two marriages, and from her first marriage, John was chosen to run the fiat empire but the second marriage she had five other kids from that as well and they in what happened between the will and margarita's mother giving her shares to john was that those five kids were screwed out of their inheritance um this is going back to the vandy fair piece because i think that a lot of this these mysterious deaths that happened in the angele family were mob related

somewhat this is a story from the vandy fair piece i'm referring to uh the marriage between sergey de pollen and margarita was in 1985 she would convert to orthodox christianity to marry sergey from the same very very from the same variety fair piece after her marriage she continued to live a life apart from that world including a 92 vacation in a daca a wooden country house in the wilds of russia which ended tragically one morning before dawn the couple awoke to find the daca in flames sergey smashed the living room window with a chair and they literally threw their five children out to safety when margarita attempted to save their dog however her hair and clothing caught fire sergey was unable to reach the room where two of the children of the family that accompanied them

on the vacation were sleeping and they perished in the fire you can imagine our anguish this burden So, this is one of many random occurrences where members of the Anjani family would be injured and killed. Another one being Gianni Anjani's son, Eduardo, who was named after his grandfather, who would commit suicide from jumping off a 200 feet tall tower. In the documentary on HBO. Angeni basically says like you know. I didn't give any faith into my son. But jumping off of that tower required a lot of courage. And so like maybe that's what he was trying to prove. And it's like I don't fucking know man. But like that doesn't seem like it.

In articles online. They talk about how Eduardo his, would convert to Islam. And they think that that was somehow... Basically, anyone that converts to a different religion in this family ends up dead or about to be dead in certain cases. So I don't know exactly what's going on, but it's got to be some sort of mob relation. At least they've got a better afterlife. We're going to begin the story of the Angeni family, and it begins with

Giovanni Angeni, the first patriarch and the founder of Fiat. He was born in 1866. He would attend military school at Modena, but he quit the army in 1892. In 1899, he was one of the prime movers. Italian military school is definitely the easiest.

Oh shit, I'm late for my seven o'clock surrender class. I didn't get my espresso today. I can't focus in class, bro. Bro, bro, can you teach me how to make a white flag? I've got a test on this at 5 o'clock. How to make some sort of white flag to surrender immediately. How do we fuck up holding these flanking positions and allow the German army to be encircled at Stalingrad? What's the most efficient way of getting drunk when we're supposed to be watching the flags. He would be the prime movers in creating Fiat, which soon became an internationally renowned automobile manufacturer. During World War I, Fiat

ran its huge turret plants at full speed, supplying the Italian military forces with armaments. The company employed a workforce of more than 30,000 in the production of streetcars, airplanes, railroad cars, tractors, and diesel engines. Yeah, just following up on that, there's a piece in The Guardian by Neil Asherson that was written right around the time Eduardo committed suicide. And they have, or he writes a basic biography of uh giovanni which everything yogi just said there is correct uh he was a piedmontese cavalry officer but uh the way this guy tells it

is that in 1899 as like a military officer he met some various people uh with uh noble titles in italian society so some kind of minor royalty and nobles and such. He met these people, and they went in with him, and they all started building cars in 1899. And then just one other thing from that article. Apparently in 1908, he was in Italian court for cooking the books. So already by 1908, he's doing some shady finances. But yeah, again, like Yogi says, basically he becomes rich during World War I because they need all these cars and trucks to transport military supplies for the Italian army.

In another article, I found that after World War I, he was ousted, but then employees at the factories would come back to him and be like, hey, man, come back to the company after your involvement with the First World War. Something similar would happen after the Second World War, but he would be ousted by anti-fascists and then not return ever again. scenery paints it is he like died of a broken heart because the factory he helped built wouldn't allow him to go back to the factory as well as like during his funeral procession they asked if they could stop in front of the fiat factory and the fiat employee said nah we good he died of a broken heart because he said if only i could have made that car faster my friend mussolini would still be alive today from the Guardian article that I just mentioned there is they say all the way back in 1914 Giovanni Inani recognized Benito Mussolini

as a political figure worth investing in and supporting so all the way back in 1914 like right at the breakout of World War I he was already kind of cultivating uh mussolini to take over italy and got in early that was probably when he was still a communist right he got in at the ground the ground floor sort of sort of making me uh doubt mussolini's leftist bona fides there so So Giovanni and Jenny, the man we've been talking about right now, the individual that started the factories, would have a son named Eduardo.

And Eduardo and his wife, oh, by the way, all of this story about this Italian empire is rife with women being completely ignored of their existence. Everything from wives to daughters could never play a role in the business acumen of the companies that were connected to the Iñáni family.

And like, you know, sure, this is how society has been for hundreds of years, but I remember when I was watching the Amanda Knox documentary, the amount of just blatant a woman couldn't, a woman would lie about these crimes and a woman like her is not to be trusted. Sexism that came out during that

was pretty blatant in terms of like, oh, Italian culture, not unlike most cultures, but definitely has a huge strain of sexism as a part of it. I was going to say, say yeah that this is a shocking misogyny from uh the italians yeah right exactly so uh gianni and jenny has a one imagine amanda knox's defense was like a woman couldn't wield a knife she was outside of the kitchen the murder was in the living room uh her appointed her appointed italian

defend defender is just like it's just look is a site like an old law that says like yeah i mean it's not it's not possible yeah like i remember watching that and like i think it was like the judges in the knox case were just, doesn't anyone realize women lie? That's what she's doing here. She is lying. I don't know if it was like the translation was poor or if that's the level of bullshittery that they were trying to pull on Knox in that moment. So from most of my research on Gianni now is going to be coming from the 2017 hbo documentary on gianni uh gianni and john and jaylee had one brother umberto and five sisters uh to maintain the platon sexism from uh this

family i'm gonna make sure to not mention any of the females names there's just too many names guys all right i'm not trying to be a sexist but i couldn't remember all of them or write them down when they came on the screen so as a a kid, he was mischievous. He liked driving past cars, and he liked trying to have sex with women. He was a promiscuous kid, according to his sisters and his family. His mother, Donna Virginia Bourbon Del Monte, had a leopard as a pet. This was the first time in this documentary where they had a hard edit. I don't know exactly what they're trying to cut out but i'm sure the any any family had a hand in what was able to be

said and not because several times during this film there's like a hard cut with people talking um his mom was promiscuous which was uh controversial for the time as eduardo was an arts man he was in theater uh he liked literature, he was more of an intellectual, which is also insulted immensely in this movie. His father, Eduardo, the son to Giovanni Agnani and the dad to Gianni Agnani, died while flying in a seaplane. He would be decapitated by the propeller of the plane as it hit a log that was floating in the water. He would have to be identified by his senator father. And when this happened, Gianni was around 12 years old. And his grandfather, Giovanni, would look at Gianni and say, like, all right, you're going to run the Fiat factory one day. So from the age of 12, Gianni was being groomed to run the Fiat empire.

So Gianni would visit the United States in 1938. He would see the Ford plant in Detroit. He would visit New York, and he loved the United States. He bought the American Dream. Compared to Italy, the United States was fucking awesome. After this, he would go to war, and he tells a story about how he went to war with mixed feelings his grandfather tried to stop gianni as he was like he quit military school but gianni was like fuck russia i'm gonna go into the military um he would say that it was a very sad experience

a lot of my friends died uh years later uh from another article I found, there was a story where Gianni would tell that in Tripoli, Libya, during the war, a German soldier, he said, was sitting in a bar for officers in the company of a Levantine beauty. The couple was approached by a young Italian officer who began flirting with the woman. The German was polite, up to a point. After all, they were allies. But when the Italian gently put his arm around the lady of the night, the German, without saying a word, discreetly took out his sidearm and shot the young Italian through the foot.

All three remained seated, and with all the noise and merriment, no one realized that a shot had been fired. After a minute or two, theian excused himself and smiling retired that's what i call style said lavocato the german never raised his voice or made a scene in public years later i found out that gianni had been the italian who had been shot if anyone had shown more style than the german it was gianni so you know it's a fucking bullshit story of where gianni was hitting on some woman and a german shot him in the foot he was like i'm gonna get out of here yeah that sounds like a made-up story to cover up the time that he uh turned over jewish partisans with rommel's african corps and got them deported to

auschwitz yeah yeah most likely yeah apparently like he was on the eastern front as an italian soldier he was wounded twice on the eastern front and then then he was in Libya with the Italians and Rommel on the other side. Yeah, I mean, you know, one thing I want to make clear on this episode is that I'm, you know, this family owned a couple of newspapers. So in terms of what information was out about them has been relatively scrubbed. I mean, everything about the Andiani family glorifies them as the Italian icons, as they seem to want to portray themselves as. Now, I read on Reddit that Rommel was a pretty good guy. And actually, he was the good Nazi. That's what they said over there on i was reading rommel's

wikipedia apparently he would like he seemed like you know whatever you think of his military prowess maybe he was disassociated maybe he was simple-minded but apparently he made regular suggestions that hitler appoint a jewish uh nazi party leader to uh manage a province like like you're not really getting this whole nazism thing buddy are you that's that's a big joe biden energy they're like congressional democrat energy it's just a woke Nazi. Yeah. She wants to have a Jewish state within the Nazi empire. In 1945, Turin was destroyed, the Italian town that they're from, and his mother would die in a car accident. She broke her neck. After the war, his grandfather, Giovanni Agnani,

was accused of being a collaborator with the Axis no basis to that allegation whatsoever so the anti-fascist said you gotta roll the fuck out and like I mentioned earlier he would the movie would make it so that he died of a broken

heart he would be exonerated but he he lost his will to live after after this incident so i mean you know from gianni's perspective though at this point his they are like your grandfather's a fucking uh fascist collaborator your parents are dead and you suck so his his entire ethos at this point is like i'm gonna fucking be awesome and so at this time he do you think he was thinking about doing war crimes on the eastern front when he was fucking jackie kennedy yeah maybe do you think that popped into his head i think so i think when

he was having sex with kennedy he was like you know? I should have committed more crimes. I would have gotten away with this. At this point, after the war, the Allies were going to take Fiat from the Italians. And according to the documentary, Gianni convinced the Americans that the Fiat factory should be in Italians. I mean, I feel like he was just kind of like, hey, you don't want us, just go home, man. And so basically at this point on, Gianni and the Fiat empire would be loyal to the United States. And that comes from Gianni visiting the United States when he was younger. But also I think he was just like, I collaborate with the winners. And in this case, it's the allies. At this point, one of the heads, Vittio valetta he lived for the company he said uh gianni sorry at this point gianni was still too young to run fiat and vittorio valetta

he lived for the company and so what would happen is that g Gianni's war friends because we're just like dude we just want to get drunk and have fun and so his grandfather was like go do that and then when you're ready you can come run the Fiat empire and I think it was basically a handshake deal between Valetta and Agnani but I'm surprised that you know after this time period that I'm about to mention, that the Fiat empire would go back to Gianni. Because after this, Gianni would spend his time around the richest Europeans, just chilling with the richest people, doing coke, smoking dope, and just fucking women. That's all he did. When he first moved to France and bought a house for a hundred thousand dollars and just fucking hung out for about 20 years just fucking pounding puss and living a

great life now i will argue this in terms of advertising for fiat priceless because you got to imagine the rich people in europe at this time are all kind of like boring old hardened dudes for the most part i mean sure there's princes and princesses who are like you know young but like they don't have all the time in the world to do whatever the fuck they want gianni was just wild this is a man who apparently would jump out of his helicopter into the mediterranean sea like he just lived life balls to the walls a quote of his that is celebrated is ladies should be treated like tarts and tarts should be treated like ladies tarts is a word for prostitute if you don't know listeners also this person would be a very good friend of Henry

Kissinger during the HBO documentary there would be a handful of Kissinger quotes. First one being, the man drove like a madman. Kissinger hated driving with Gianni. Yeah, they both were members of the Bilderberg group, which, you know, don't draw anything nefarious from that. No, no conclusions there. Along with Rockefeller. But yeah, no, Gianni's nickname was, quote, the Rake of the Riviera.

And as Yogi was saying, he spent from 1945 to he takes over the company in 1966, he spent 20-some years being a playboy, hooking up with a bunch of actresses of the day, as well as allegedly jackie kennedy yes and this time being post-world war a very prosperous time for italy itself and around 1954 i believe he would be given a million dollars a year allowance and like man like no billionaires are doing it right at all. But in terms of, like, I just get to do what the fuck I want, you know the, like, Richard Branson, like, mid-Atlantic accented pieces of shit? They all want to be this guy, which is a guy that just fucking drives boats, fucking drives cars as fast as he wants, lives life balls to the walls but i will say that um you know in terms of his mom owning a leopard and being a bit of a promiscuous woman there is an air of uh perfectionism in a handful of these billionaires similar to like elon musk and others where

they just want everything to look perfect but at no point is the books or how much money he was spending or how much money was coming in and out by gianni ever even in consideration there's a huge aspect of billionaires that is like it just gotta look good and uh it's poison really it's i think it's like a maybe they have like an insecurity that possibly um they didn't earn their massive wealth and place in the world, and if they turn out a shitty product, people might catch on. But of course, that's just an insecurity and has no basis in reality.

I mean, definitely, though. But think about if you had a million-dollar-a-year allowance, what you could do with that. I could almost meet my desired level of Magic the Gathering card spending with that kind of money. Black Lotus or two every year.

I don't know how much they're worth. Several thousand now. Well, you'd be set there. No. You'd be giving that much money, Shawnee and you'd blow it on more magic cards. I'm telling you, man. A million dollars ain't nearly as much as you want it to be when it goes by year after year.

Well, the cost of a good red dick is probably not what it used to be. Just like Jackie Kennedy walking by, and I'm like, no, no, get out of the way. I'm looking at this Power 9 over here. Get out of the way. I'm looking at this Power 9 over here. Like, get out of the way. I'm trying to see the Mox Emerald. So at this time, the documentary talks about... Go on, Sean. I did want to back up just a little bit

when we talk about the Americans and the Allies after World War II, letting them keep the company. I really recommend this book, Savage Continent. They talk a lot about what happened in Europe after World War II. And part of that was in Italy, obviously, the Americans, the British, they ran the entire country. They had the armed forces there. They got to decide what would happen. And so, of course, you know, under 20 years of fascism,

a lot of resentments build up in Italy. And so there was a very strong communist party that probably wouldn't have actually been able to win the elections outright, but they would have definitely won, you know, local elections, governorships, probably have support from a quarter of the country or so. And they were, to various degrees, with the consent of the Allies, violently suppressed.

There were several, in the wake of the fall of Mussolini, there were several peasant uprisings, several local land redistributions, where these landlords, who had, of course, cooperated with the fascists, their tenants basically just redistributed their land themselves. And then, of course, the Americans and the Brits consented to allowing these local landlords to round up forces and violently massacre these farmers and other tenants who had attempted land redistribution. So I guess what i'm getting at here is that his power was part of the larger allied project to prevent a communist takeover in france italy all these other countries by supporting business elements and former fascist elements of the government of italy

and backing up even more uh his grandfather giovanni i did just want to mention you know we talked about mussolini and how he uh realized this guy was a prospect all the way back in 1914 apparently at the fiat factories they had uh in 1921 they had uh some really like violent and intense labor militancy you know union activity and uh then mussolini comes to power and that all stops for some reason so you know this is a family that was plugged directly into mussolini's fascist government and then was able to assert to the allies who took over after like hey we'll we'll keep the communists out just let us keep running shit so the documentary doesn't say this outright but gianni loved eating but, I'm just kidding around.

But I will say that at one point, Pamela Churchill would get a divorce to Randolph Churchill, the son of the prime minister. He was apparently a drunk. And Pamela Churchill was like, I want that Gianni. Winston Churchill's son a drunk? Knock me over with a feather. Pamela Churchill was like, I'm trying to get that on any fucking dick and so they were using each other she would teach him the world of politics and he'd teach her the language of analingus um but he would buy her a flat in paris he'd get her a bentley a chauffeur

he gave her the world she would convert to catholicism to try and appease his sisters but her sisters were like nah you got a divorce we don't play that game right and so gianni would stay a gigolo he uh got caught having sex with anne marie de stanville by pamela and according to the doc she threw something at them and after this gianni and this floozy rolled out and supposedly he was on coke and he would drive like a madman as it was he would call this period the great white knights and according to the documentary he crashed into a butcher truck and fucked up his leg causing seven fractures in his leg this would cause him to have to stay in the hospital from two to nine

months he was on painkillers this entire time and his sisters were like nah pamela's a snake we're gonna hook this guy up with someone else but i would argue that winston churchill's daughter finds out that the dude she's trying to fuck is cheating on her and you know this man that would drive like a man madman constantly would never run into no butcher truck no the churchill got some bodyguards to beat the shit out of his leg and then he's in a hospital he's like yeah i got into a car accident because he's keeping his mouth shut on this i can't i can't confirm any of this information but it is just very odd to me that this man that lived a life you know as a you know self-described madman daredevil would get into a car accident and the person he's with wouldn't

be injured at all at driving 125 miles into the back of a truck in this time period yeah like that 100 they were driving 120 miles an hour supposedly which is like he was like all right what's what's a number i can make up that i look cool in this story no 100 is not enough it's got to be more right like he he would look like fucking spaghetti sauce he would look like his nightly dinner had he actually been going 120 miles an hour and i mean if you look at pictures of him at the time he does look exactly like that um survive a car accident body guy see online yeah uh it was uh he wasn't taking care of himself but he managed to survive the accident i just feel like the fact that the person he was with wasn't injured at all and he broke a leg is so suspect to me and i mean like if a person i was with was cheating on me and i had the power

to have that motherfucker's leg broke in seven places, yeah, I think that's a fair revenge, if you know what I mean. Sean, you got another tidbit on Mussolini? Well, just one other thing from Ghiani's childhood is apparently, like, just from the Guardian article I was quoting from earlier, we mentioned Giovanni, the grandfather grandfather his son eduardo dies gets beheaded by the seaplane apparently his widow virginia embarked on an affair with like an italian writer and uh giovanni again the grandfather responded by kidnapping her children including giana and this dispute went on until Mussolini intervened personally to end this kidnapping. Yes.

So, yeah. What a statesman. The HBO documentary did not go into that. That's fucking great, Sean. Mussolini shows up and he's like, sorry, I would have been here sooner, but the trains were late. So, Gianni's sisters were like fuck pamela

churchill there's this princess named um maria she she's a royal she's been wanting to fuck gianni for five years let's get her to marry gianni and so she went to see him in the hospital bed in florence and she would get married to gianni in 1953 in france in strasbourg uh the mariah the maria family wasn't into it because gianni was a fucking playboy and he like loved fucking women all around the the continent and so their royal upbringing was like we can't trust this person but when they first got married maria would read poetry and sleep all day. This is from the documentary. And Gianni was like, fuck that noise.

And so he forced her to go to a location to learn how to be a wife. And the documentary describes it as she dealt with that witch for two to three months and then came back and understood that she not only has to love her husband, but also has to be a wife now. Oh, my God.

She sounded awesome before all that. I mean, you marry a billionaire. You just want to sleep. You marry a wildly rich guy. That sounds like what you would do, and then it sounds like they sent her to a torture camp. Like Italian how to be a wife school is one of the maybe most horrifying sentences yeah they made uh she was extremely cool and then they said oh we we can't have this right exactly

so they would have uh eduardo and margarita and you know from the doc's perspective it's like gianni stopped being a wild person he became a family man he bought this house that was in the movie Red Shoes this giant estate in Italy and Gianni and his wife would just throw parties and everyone wanted to come in from the Kennedys to Kissinger to royals all around uh Europe and I mean all white people by the way no black people or brown people are at all in this movie at all um this you know at this time is where gianni's uh style influence would uh would in uh this is where gianni's style would influence the modern world he would do shit like he would wear a watch on the outside of his shirt cuff and people were like man that's fucking badass he would be into the art of Balthus.

He bought a Batman Warhol painting that he held close to his heart. But he'd also have a lot of these garcinieres, which is basically like a one-room apartment for your mistress. And he had them all over the place. The man knew how to keep secrets. They made the style of Italy matter. Gianni was a vain individual, but he would do shit. That was kind of funny. He'd call people at 5.30 in the morning

or 6 a.m. He'd call someone in France, and they'd wake up and be like, hey, what the fuck's up, man? He'd be like, is Paris amusing today? The person would be like, I don't fucking know, man. One of the guys would tell a story about like he'd be

like hey look out your window is the sea good today and he's like dude i'm so tired can i just go to sleep like look out that window he's like yep the sea looks nice and gianni be like my captain's fucking lying to me he's like all right cool and then 20 minutes later gianni would be outside this guy's door be like hey let's go sailing come on it's it's six in the morning you want to go sailing right um the man had just like if you were a billionaire and you had a bunch of friends spending your money that would be the best way to do it just be like so annoying and nobody's gonna be like shut the fuck up dude because it's like no i want to go on your yacht you know tomorrow right if i mean if i knew a billionaire who called me at 3 a.m.

and said, is Paris amusing today? I'd go into witness protection. He calls his friend in Norway, he's like, Sven, get some rest, you look tired. Click. He's not even there. Calling my friend in Tokyo at 4 a.m. and being like, how are the anime mecha doing today?

Are they powerful? Have they combined? I mean, you know, I will say, though, that I kind of understand the strategy. If you had, like, I mean, it's kind of like tweeting something at, like, 7 a.m., and then everyone awake at that time sees that tweet before anything else comes out. Like, it's just about sticking in people's head, and then everyone awake at that time sees that tweet before anything else comes out. It's just about sticking in people's head and to do that you've got to be kind of annoying. You have to be charming and all this, this and that, but really you just have to kind of remind people

you exist constantly. We're certainly seeing that in the modern day of social media where the more you post, the more people know you exist, but then at the same time, the people that like you fucking say fuck your noise, you know? I think for most people on Twitter these days, when they post something like that at 7 a.m., with that in mind, it's usually with the mindset of,

which opinion can ruin the most people's day? There was another story that his chef told where the president or prime minister of italy came to his house and she's like all right let's figure out a menu and the chef's like okay what do you want to serve and he's like let's serve from bull testicles and the chef was like i don't you want to serve that guy that and he's like when people come over your house they should be treated how they deserve to be treated so the man was petty um when the kennedys would throw these black tie events the people that were first on on the list were the and johnny couple this like at mid-atlantic community that we know between you know new york new england london paris that entire like air of aristocrat aristocrat uh nonsense was was these

people were the kings and queens of that world um but because of this they were terrible parents they weren't adults i mean gianni would literally do things where he would have lunch in paris and then he'd have dinner in london and then he'd fly back home to Italy and you know friends would say that the worst part about being Gianni's friend was that you had to go back to your life and it screams of a person that isn't willing to deal with his emotions because as much as you know this man lived a life that is you know even myself, envious. At the same time, he just seemed so alone. His kids were mostly raised by their babysitters and other people that they hired, whether it be from the Fiat company or...

There's one story of Margarita. From the HBO documentary, it says that she shaved her head and her dad was like what did you do and she was like at least you noticed but then another article said that she shaved her head and her dad was like if you're trying to get me to notice you it's not working like i mean there's a conflict between this family and it's really sad because I think that Gianni, when he lost his parents, had to stand on his own two feet in the worst ways. But never grew out of the feeling that everything that you hold dear can be taken away from you. And that was only more solidified by his time at war. And so when he was told, hey, here's the money, go do whatever the fuck you want.

He's like, I'm gonna fucking live my life to a level that nobody has ever lived um so later on in his documentary in 1969 gianni would buy ferrari because ford was interested in buying ferrari when they were hitting bankruptcy and gianni said fuck that we're italian you know ferrari stays in italy um for a man that would side with the Allies, he was very into the idea that Italians stay Italian. This ethnocentric idea was certainly something that came into his life. And by the late 70s,

there would be protests all over Europe. In watching some of the footage in the documentary, it honestly reminds me of how what we're dealing with in the United States right now. The Fiat employees would come together to band together to create a stronger union. And Gianni would beat this by introducing inflation wages to the union. But by the early 70s, the Yom Kippur war would have a gas crisis and so car sales were down 40 in italy and fiat was bleeding the post-war was bleeding money and the post-war boom was over at

this point um so from the documentary it would say that you know g't lay off people because he was like, Italy has to remain Italian. And so instead, he would then turn to the Libyans, specifically Gaddafi, and to sell 10% of fiat to them. In the HBO documentary, Kissinger disagreed with this move, and he told him so. So in Vanity Fair, alan friedman wrote an article called capitalism italian style back in 1989 and it talks about giani as well as at that time young burlesconi silvio burlesconi but the basic story with the libyans is that in 1976 apparently he

convinces gaddafi to buy 15 of fiat at three times the market price, because these various Middle East and North African rulers have all this oil money. 1986, Gaddafi has all these tensions with Washington, D.C., and fiat relies on Pentagon contracts for a lot of revenue. So they have to figure out a way to buy Gaddafi out so that Washington, D.C. will stop breathing down their necks about it. And that's kind of an interesting little story, too. Yeah. From the documentary, they would sell 10% of Fiat for $400 million. And although the Gaddafi would have a role on the board, it would only be in title. Like they technically wouldn't be able to do anything at Fiat was how the relationship was structured. In 1976, the communists were taking over. Two million members of Italians were controlling the unions, and it was looking as if Italy would become a communist nation during the Cold War. Gianni felt that if Italy were to commit to communism, that it would fall apart, akin

to Cuba, and his allegiance to the United States made him so that he was worried. At this time, factories were being burnt down, and the Agnelli's rule... That's a real risk in, you know, Italy, which has had 41 governments in 39 years. It might fall apart if the communists take over. So, wait, what year again was it that the communists were on the rise?

1976 is when it was worrying on i that is and i'm not bullshitting you the exact year that uh p2 propaganda duet was taken down the uh masonic um uh conspiracy uh connected to the vatican and with possible cia connections oh really um in rome yeah yeah i i absolutely believe this guy is plugged into u.s intelligence by the way oh yeah um that's fucking wild so yeah so at this time the general general public in Italy looked at the Agnelli's like the villains that they kind of are. They get to live a lavish lifestyle while the employees of Fiat had, you know, what would be considered by, you know, American factory workers as like good wages and good health benefits. But the unions were demanding that, hey, we're doing the work we want. We want more share. The Red Brigade would kneecap fiat managers. They wanted to install a leftist alternative.

Yeah, the Red Brigade was a leftist terrorist organization in Italy throughout the 70s and 80s. They would, a revolution was beginning. They would murder a magistrate from Rome. They shot a prison guard. They would firebomb cars. I mean, they were targeting the elites and attacking them. What you're saying is they were fucking cool. I mean, like, you know, they were terrifying. Italy. Lee cool. terrifying um italy lee cool the red brigade made it so that italy became strong against the fiat

executives uh fiat was equivalent to the state just like in the united states you could look at lockheed and all our manufacturers as they are essentially the state um carlo was a director of logistics he was also murdered at fiat and he was murdered by the red brigade uh they thought that his role had a connection to the politics in italy aldo moro was kidnapped and then assassinated by the red brigade um and during this time gianni would stay in italy and and outsmart the red brigade by driving fancy and like you know a whole bunch of fucking chiani propaganda where he had a fiat but he put a ferrari engine in it and he would out drive his own security you know like a whole bunch of like james bond type of shit you know

so fiat would then fire 60 people based off of terrorist activities and this would cause some massive strikes and i'm pretty sure that those 16 employees were probably ones responsible for the labor union activity and in 1980 40 000 people were in the streets protesting the right to work and this seems also very propaganda heavy sean you had a bit more on this too right well i, depending on your interpretation, the last major strike at Fiat was in 1980, where apparently Ghiani got 40,000 scabs to fill all these jobs from trade union members that had walked off. Right. And a lot of people cite this as kind of the moment that really broke the back of Italian trade unions. From the documentary perspective, after this, the 80s were awesome. Fiat after this just kept kicking ass.

It literally does a montage of cool cars that were produced by Fiat at that time um so as the 80s began they were italy got back on track on in the direction of american imperialism and they would pay off the money that gaddafi paid him for 10 percent of the fiat board sean well yeah so the gaddafi story is pretty interesting again this alan friedman article in uh in vanity fair but basically like we were mentioning you know they have these pentagon contracts they want to get gaddafi out so according to the article um the libyans were demanding eight times what they bought this for what they bought the fiat stock for to buy them out and make them go away um so apparently uh the stock price the stock price didn't support that at the time this is 1986 but what happened

was they managed to get this deal with the libyans and in the days preceding the closing of the deal fiat stock starts soaring mysteriously and hits record historic levels right before they close the deal so that they are able to buy the uh the Libyans out at eight times of the money they put in. Apparently, Gaddafi walked away with $3.1 billion in cash in 1986 because of this deal. And according to the Vanity Fair article, an aide to Ghiani later admitted that one of his companies had been buying up fiat stock to keep the share under control during the negotiations in fact his company accounted for nearly a fifth of all trading in fiat common stock at the time so he had his own little company buying up the stock in order to drive up the stock price uh so that he could pay the libyans off but not only that um

we didn't mention this up to the time but we should kind of mention here now or up to now we should mention that medio banca was an italian state industry bank set up after world war ii and you know of course japan had similar things but these are kind of state banks nominally the people who work for them are state employees that are supposed to support industry in these countries. But the head of Mediobanca became a close friend of Gianni and basically in many different ways supported him throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s. At this time, Enrico Cuccio, the head of Mediobanca, basically looked at Gianni and was like, hey man, listen, you don't know how your books work, and I know you don't, so you're going to hire Romiti, this guy of mine, and put him on the fiat board, and he's going to fucking run your books solid.

I personally think that Enrico Cuccio was linked to the organized crime units of Italy and that Mediobco was kind of used as a money laundering unit. I don't have anything to prove this, but just look at a photo of Enrico Cuccio and tell me that that man is not connected to crime. Do physiology, physiognomy on him and tell me if you see mafia associations.

So in the late 80s, early 90s, go on, Sean. But yeah, Cuccio, the Mediobanca guy, basically, not only that, not only did they drive up the shares, but Guiani used this opportunity to buy back control, family control of this state bank, Mediobanca, he sets up a financial structure that, quote, that6%, equal to less than a fourth of the prime rate that other Italian companies would have had to pay for borrowing far smaller amounts. So basically, and the minority shareholders in fiat were left holding the bag. So basically, he didn't have enough cash to buy out, to up his stake, but the bank gives him 1.1 billion at a fourth of the typical interest rate and then he also borrows from fiat shareholders and leaves them you know completely holding the bag for this deal at this point gianni would want to choose his successor so at first he chooses umberto anjny his younger brother and he lets the press and

people know that umberto's the guy he's gonna take over when i'm gone but romiti and mito banka were like uh-uh son fuck that noise and enrico cuccio used uh fiat leaking cash to implement his will and not let gianni's younger brother umberto become the successor uh five years later gianni convinced romiti to retire and when they had to find a new successor they wouldn't even look at eduardo gianni's son because of the fact that he was addicted to heroin after his time in princeton and i don't know nearly much about the converting for islam being part of it, but it's certainly suspect. And from the documentary, Gianni would get into an argument with his son, and three days later, Eduardo would jump off a high point and commit suicide. So instead, Gianni thought, I'm going to let my nephew, Giovannino, take over the company when I'm dead.

But then he would get diagnosed with cancer and die a year later um Umberto would then have to bury his his son then so then instead John Elkin Gianni's grandson from our grandnephew I guess no his grandson Margarita's son would then be given the appointment to be the board of fiat so John at the age of so John Elkin was be given the appointment to be the board of Fiat. So John Elkin was then given the appointment to be the board at Fiat. He was given the golden keys. Gianni's kids kind of got shafted, but Eduardo would kill himself, and it was quite tragic. John's younger brother Lapo, when when he was 17 his grandfather was a to yeah his name's lapo uh he would he would work briefly he uh he tragically killed himself

by running into a gumbo without having eaten a mushroom first i thought he died in a tragic slide whistle accident um this guy he's the guy that uh was on drugs as well and then is in a sex scandal as well as he lappo kidnapped himself to try and get the ransom money from his own family that is such a lappo move but the reason i want to mention this is because he would spend a year interning for henry kissinger who was a close friend of his grandfather so giovanni would die and his daughter would then be confused as to why the will and living testament of giovanni was as fractured as it was so she would then decide to sue and try and find out more about it. Her own kids and her own mom would be like, fuck you, Margarita, you're being ungrateful about this shit.

And she'd be like, fuck that noise, I just want to know how much money we got, basically. So this is a conversation between Henry Kissinger and Lapo. I always like to tell the young men that power is the greatest aphrodisiac. Also, I orchestrated the genocide in East Timor. So the Agnelli family now has become fractured because of gianni's daughter marguerite not knowing why the family wealth is disclosed as poorly as it is she's filed a lawsuit against

three of the individuals that helped gianni at fiat themselves as well as her own kids and her mom to find out hey how much money do we got and are we all getting a fair share of this and you know similar to the family we covered recently uh the pritzkers around 2000 fucking the family says fuck this noise i want my money and it's kind of sad because none of these people got this money and the three children that have the most claim to the air currently are designing sunglasses. One of them is running Exort. The other one is a director and is doing art tours at their family museum.

But for the most part, the Gianni Agnani legacy is that this man probably fucked Jackie Kennedy. I did want to follow up. One last thing about the Gaddafi is according to that Vanity Fair profile, the first person he called, Giani, the first person he called after he got Gaddafi out of the company, he called then-Vice President George Bush,

George H.W. Bush. They were apparently close friends. And I just want to say that's very strange to call the man who murdered the president you were cucking Wow yeah but of course George HW Bush was a CIA head so if you want to kind of follow the rabbit hole of all those Bilderberg group connections, Henry Kissinger connections, maybe that would be a productive use of your time. I also tried to fuck Jackie Kennedy. She told me if I wanted to get some pussy, I could go fuck myself.

You know, in the story covering Eduardo's funeral, I found that at one point Margarita and her brother Eduardo would be kind to one another. They were siblings. They were raised in the same hell. And he would tell her that she was naive. He would say she didn't understand the political dynamics of the company, that she would believe what people told her. And you know what i think eduardo knew the true connections of the anyani empire and how it was just rooted in in ruthless uh this is our money fuck you pay me uh dynamics and although

i think that um the man certainly got to live a life where he just got to drive fast cars and fuck loose women and just be on drugs and weed. That 10 to 20 year period of his life certainly made the publicity of Fiat in the European sector solidified. Because like, you know, you find out that like, hey man, what car are you driving? Oh, I'm driving the car that's run by a company that fuck Jackie Kennedy. Come on. How are you going to beat that advertising? You know what I mean? Well,

yeah, I think it was that. And also just heavy state support. Like another thing I learned from the vanity fair profile was at the time in the, uh, the eighties, there were no insider trading laws in Italy.

And like the most revealing thing from the profile, again, it was the, it was written in 1989. As of time gianni and gianni's family his holdings gave him control of a quarter 25 percent of the italian stock exchange that at that time around 25 billion us dollars worth of capital it's since gone down a bit with the introduction of EU competition and such. But at the time, he was also the proprietor of two of three of Italy's leading newspapers, 22 magazines. He controlled, in 1989, he controlled 99% of Italian car productions and 60% of Italian car sales. And the piece kind of goes through how, at this time in Italian capitalism,

it was kind of an old boy network where you would just work with these other 5% to 10% shareholders and effectively everything would be governed by this cartel of capitalists who ran Italy up until, you know, the turn of the century. Yeah. And, you know, for a family that is as regarded in terms of legacy, they really kind of, you know, anytime I've looked at things and it's like, oh, it's got Italian leather, they're pointing back to these, you know, supposed style icons that defined what, you know, style was in that time period gianni if you ask me was like the softest tough guy in the world in that like he could fight but

also he was just like a nice guy that liked to fucking do drugs he's the pete davidson of his own generation is what i'm trying to say right but yeah it is just like going all the way back to of course you know uh world war one and then mussolini and then the allies and then the state bank like he couldn't really have fucked it up like he literally went around and partied for 20 years and he only got richer in that time and by the 80s that was the height of his power definitely i mean if you told me yogi you have to party for 20 years and then after that you'll get a business empire, I don't know if I could really pull it off. Like, sure.

Like, mentally, I'm like, I could fucking party for 20 years, but I don't know if my heart could take it. Would I be willing to jump out of a helicopter into the Mediterranean Sea every morning just to prove that I fucking, I'm awesome? Probably not. I do just want to say, he was voted one of the top five, according to his to say he was voted one of the top five according to his wikipedia he was voted one of the top five best dressed men of all time and uh i would just like to say please ignore the fact that he owns 22 magazines for the source of that particular poll the man was quirky he would do things where like he would have his tie with the back half being tucked in his

pants i mean you know illuminati signaling so they identify one another exactly all right for some reason he only wears that style on the date of john f kennedy's assassination but he does it every year and also for a man that's like his way through Europe, the fact that there's been zero cases of women being like, yeah, I didn't want to fuck that guy, and he came on to me and fucked me, is baffling. Just impossible. Well, it's the mafia connections, honestly.

You weren't wrong about that. All right. And with that, this has been Grub Stickers. I'm Yogi Poliwal. I'm Andy Palmer. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. I'm Steve Jeffers. Thank you so much.

Have a wonderful evening.