• 30
  • September
    2011

When Alfredo Czarninski left Germany in 1936, just three years after the Nazis came to power, he settled in Ecuador. He opened a restaurant, and eventually expanded into grocery stores. The company he founded now owns 76 stores in Ecuador and has more than 7000 employees. The business is estimated to be worth around $1 billion.

The company is incorporated in the United States, and that is why Alfredo Czarninski's daughter has brought a lawsuit against her brothers, claiming that they hijacked her inheritance. She alleges in her suit that after her father's death, her brothers reorganized the company so that they would each inherit more of it than she did. A niece is also alleged to have been a part of the plan that the daughter claims essentially disinherited her.

The father died in 2003, and the daughter originally sued her brothers in 2005 in Israel, where she lives. During that court fight, though, she discovered that her corporate holdings in the family business were in a company incorporated in the United States.

Florida contested will attorneys noted from news reports of the case that the daughter's claim is that the brothers reduced the value of her shares in her father's company until they were essentially worthless.

Officials of the company had no comment on the family dispute or on the reasons for the current value of the company's shares.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek "Heir to Ecuador Fortune Sues Brothers in Inheritance Dispute" Sept. 29, 2011