Once my father’s first court appearance was set for January 1986, it was agreed with his legal advisers that—even though he insisted he’d been kept in the dark regarding the company’s accounting practices—he would plead guilty, pay back the money owed, and hope for a fine. As the date approached, his preparations for the hearing intensified. I lost count of the number of meetings we attended with his defense lawyers, who continued to assure us that they’d be able to negotiate his freedom.
To protect the family assets, my father decided to distribute his shares in the Italian operation between Giorgio and Roberto, giving Paolo nothing. This left him with just 16.7 percent of the US operation, which in hindsight was the most disastrous decision of his life. He was desperate to protect the family legacy and never for one moment did he consider that they couldn’t be relied upon.
With so much going on in my father’s life, I was left with little time to think of much else. Six months had elapsed since Alexandra’s birth and she still hadn’t been christened. As observant Catholics, Santino’s parents warned that if anything happened to her, she would end up in purgatory. So when they invited us to spend Christmas with them in Italy that year, we arranged her baptism for December 30 in their hometown in northern Italy.
My father was unable to come. He had to prepare for his upcoming trial and opted instead to spend a quiet Christmas in Rome. Besides, he needed time alone with Mamma. In recent months his dependence on her had grown and it pained him greatly that she’d been so far away. Although they spoke on the phone every day—long calls that lasted well into the night—he missed her desperately.
Together once more in the city where they’d fallen in love, my parents tried not to dwell on the possibility that he could go to prison—an unthinkable outcome, especially for Mamma. She had long since accepted that he would likely predecease her—that was an inevitability she couldn’t hide from. When he’d caught pneumonia in Florida, she thought his time had come but took comfort from the fact that she was by his side. In prison, there would be no such solace, and being separated by such sickening circumstances would, she believed, surely bring about his demise. There were moments when she thought it might also bring about hers.
Christmas had come and gone and their festivities had been bittersweet. Neither of them slept much; they woke up in the middle of the night with the cold realization that these might be their last days together. On the eve of Papà’s return to the States, he was more solemn than ever. He’d spent the morning packing and making last-minute preparations when, an hour before he was due to leave, he asked her to sit with him, as he had something important to say.
Handing her a large envelope, he told her, “I need you to look after this, Bruna. You’re the only person I can trust. If anything happens to me, you must give this to Roberto and Giorgio.” Opening the package, he showed her leather-bound books of shares along with a bundle of lire. As per the long-standing tradition at Gucci, the baton was being passed down the male line. My brothers had worked a lifetime in the business and were arguably entitled. I wasn’t even considered, not that I expected to be. This was simply the way things were—a classic example of my father’s conservative mindset and the generation he came from.
My mother knew she held our future in her hands and was moved by his unparalleled show of trust. “Any other woman would have fled to South America and lived a hundred lives!” she told me afterward. She was, however, terrified of the responsibility and hurried to the bank with the shares hidden under a woolen cape, eager to secure them in a safety-deposit box.
A few days later Alexandra was baptized at the Chiesa di San Martino in Schio, one hundred kilometers from Venice. It was a chilly, foggy day and we shivered in the church. Mamma came but was very sad. It was an emotionally charged day—my dear friend Maria, whom I’d asked to take on the role of godmother, had been killed in a car accident a few months earlier and a friend of Santino’s stepped in to take her place. Enrico became the godfather, and our baby girl was formally given her name.
When he returned to New York, my father went to court on his own, as per his wishes. He had already insisted that my mother remain home, as it was “a mere formality,” he said. He’d enter his plea and the case would be adjourned until a full hearing for sentencing later in the year. There was no need for either of us to attend. In truth, he didn’t want anyone to see him so shamed and my mother didn’t think she could bear it.
Knowing what he was going through without either of us by his side, however, I felt so helpless and couldn’t help but rail at the unfairness of it all. Not only had he been forced to take the blame for a scheme he had no part in, everyone else had reaped the benefits, especially Rodolfo and—via his inheritance—Maurizio. Yet because my father was the head of the company and the only green card holder, he became the fall guy. Not that he would have had it any other way. A man of high principle, he believed that with authority comes responsibility and, in any event, ignorance is no defense in the eyes of the law.
Standing at the front of the courtroom, a few feet from the press gallery packed with reporters eager to portray him as a crook, my father admitted two counts of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to impede and distract the IRS. Each count carried a maximum sentence of five years, although his lawyers promised he’d walk out a free man, albeit considerably poorer. Lawyers from the IRS claimed that a total of $18 million had been diverted since 1972, much of which went to “unnamed co-conspirators.” They insisted my father owed them nearly $8 million in back taxes. In a brief statement, Papà told the judge, “I was not involved,” reiterating his position that he was unaware of the way in which the offshore payments had been carried out.
After a ten-minute hearing, the judge ordered him to set about paying the owed taxes and watched as he wrote a check for $1 million there and then before the case was adjourned.
By the time I returned to Manhattan, he was clearly relieved that the experience was over. In all his years in business he had never faced such public humiliation and it didn’t sit well with him. As he said, he had incriminated himself “for the welfare of everyone.”
His next few weeks were so focused on the ongoing legal battle and the decision to adjourn sentencing until September 1986 that when he turned up unexpectedly for my twenty-third birthday in March, I was delighted. Santino had organized a surprise party at an Argentinian restaurant in the Meatpacking District, an area considered a virtual no-man’s-land in those days. For that one night, surrounded by my friends and some of the more colorful characters from New York’s nightlife, including Dianne Brill, the five-foot-nine self-acclaimed “queen of the downtown scene,” I saw a sparkle return to his eyes that I hadn’t seen in ages. Known as “Bubbles” and with blond hair teased skyward, Dianne warmed to my father immediately and he couldn’t help but ogle her famed bosom from across the table. With Mamma still in Rome, Papà had brought Lina Rossellini instead, who seemed overwhelmed by it all, wondering what was going to happen next as my friends went into full party mode.
Not long afterward, my father did something astounding. Although he was still entitled to attend the next board meeting in Florence, everyone was on tenterhooks wondering if he’d really show up and face Maurizio, who had never relinquished control. When he did, they could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. In spite of all that Maurizio had put him through, my father embraced his nephew as if nothing had happened, kissing him on both cheeks.
Sitting at the table he’d once presided over, he referred to the new chairman as “young man” and suggested with an avuncular smile that they put their disagreements aside and work together. Maurizio refused to play his game. Even though he was still under police scrutiny, he made it clear that he fully intended to move forward with his reorganization plans. The only saving grace was that my two brothers remained as vice presidents.
As ever, the media maintained a keen interest in the company’s affairs. After the meeting, my father told a waiting journalist tha
t he was still an optimist, returning to New York with hopes that “an accord [would] be imminent.” Back in Manhattan, he certainly appeared more hopeful, and for a while, we resumed our normal routines—going to our favorite restaurants or having dinner at home in my apartment. Santino was a great cook and anything he prepared was better than eating out. Papà played with his “Alexina,” the love of our lives, who’d started to utter a few words, including one for her grandfather—“Babbo,” the affectionate name for a Tuscan patriarch. He loved that moniker, as his sons had always called him “Daddy.”
Prompted by my mother, Papà set in motion the legal registration of me as his daughter in Italy so that there could be no further obstacles to my inheriting the minimum, plus whatever he chose to leave me. My mother made it clear that unless he did so, I wouldn’t be formally acknowledged. “You’ll have an Italian passport,” she explained.
“But I love my British passport!” I replied. “I’m proud of it!”
Losing her patience, she was adamant that I’d be allowed to have both. “Just do as I say, it’s in your best interests,” she concluded.
I didn’t argue.
My status became official that May. At the age of twenty-three, I could finally be considered an Italian citizen and was now officially Aldo Gucci’s daughter, with equal entitlement to my father’s estate as my brothers. Not that this was foremost on my mind, or his for that matter, as he must have wondered what he’d have left when all was said and done. He still had to find the several million he owed in taxes and that wasn’t the kind of cash he had in his bank account. The first asset to be sold was a property and some land he owned in Palm Beach, and then—much to his distress—he was forced to auction off the works of art in the Gucci Galleria, one by one. Of all the painful moments he faced, I think this was one of the worst, as he had no choice but to dismantle this beautiful reflection of the business and all he had created.
Although he maintained a veneer of composure as his sentencing hearing loomed, he lost weight and seemed paler, older somehow. His conversations with my mother became deeper and more emotional. She, too, became increasingly morose, and—while I struggled with motherhood and the ongoing trouble with my marriage—I spent much of my time on the phone to Rome trying to cheer her up so that he wouldn’t hear the anguish in her voice.
“Pray and trust in the outcome,” Sari Nandi had told them both. Heeding his words, my father frequently walked to St. Patrick’s to kneel and reflect on what had become of him. The great name of Gucci seemed lost to him now. What did he have to show for his lifetime’s work?
I, too, was left floundering. Although I didn’t want to join the business to begin with, my father had won me over and given me a fulfilling and rewarding role that I had grown to love. I hadn’t planned a career in retail but I had started to believe there was a place for me at Gucci. “What will the future hold for me now?” I asked myself.
I had never been particularly religious but that long hot summer in New York, as the date of my father’s potential incarceration neared, I have to admit that I, too, turned to God.
We rarely know our own strength until we are truly tested. That’s when we discover hidden reserves that we didn’t even know we had. Throughout my life, I have had to draw upon those reserves in times of hardship.
Without doubt, one such moment was the day I climbed the steps of the imposing New York State Supreme Court building in Foley Square clutching the arm of my eighty-one-year-old father as he faced the possibility of imprisonment. It felt like scaling a mountain and I could barely catch my breath. Papà never expected me to go to court with him that day, nor did he ask, but Mamma was in Rome and I refused to leave him alone to his fate.
Built in granite in the style of a Roman temple, the courthouse has a Corinthian colonnade and wide stone steps that sweep up to a triangular pediment bearing the inscription The True Administration of Justice Is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government. Just as Papà hadn’t wanted to let go of my hand on my wedding day, so I didn’t want to release my grip on him as we entered the courtroom and took our places—my father and his attorneys toward the front, Santino and I a few rows behind.
As the sole defendant in a multimillion-dollar fraud trial in Manhattan’s highest court, he must have cast his thoughts back to those days in 1953 when he’d stared up at the Statue of Liberty before disembarking in New York Harbor with dreams of conquering America. He’d walked up and down Fifth Avenue, where he set his sights on the first US store, imagining his name in big bold letters in the heart of the city. A few years later, when jet lag and the excitement of it all kept him up at night, he’d write one of his many love letters to his “Brunina” back in Rome. He told her, “I wanted you to know how beautiful everything is here…New York really is the high life…How wonderful it is to live like this!”
Those dreams were now in shreds as he sat in court, his hands tightly interlocked in his lap. Betrayed, ousted, and shamed, he looked smaller than usual—shrunken in his seat and staring straight ahead as the press and public filed in behind us. This was it—the moment we’d all been waiting for. The months of talking and pleading were over. Aside from Santino and me, there were no other family members present or any of his former colleagues or staff. The only show of solidarity came in the form of a series of character references, reminding the judge of the many charities my father had supported. Maurizio stayed away. Papà’s sons Roberto and Giorgio opted to remain in Italy and Paolo, a key informant, was notably absent.
As I fought to stay strong, the proceedings got under way with a presentence conference in the judge’s robing room. It was agonizing not to be privy to what was going on behind the heavy oak door but a stenographer would later provide an official record of everything said. My father’s attorney Milton Gould, who was only four years younger than my father, began by reminding the judge that Papà had not only cooperated fully and paid back much of what he owed but that he could easily have fled to Italy to avoid prosecution. Instead he had chosen “deliberately, intelligently and understandingly” to face up to the charges and his responsibilities. “What do we do with an eighty-one-year-old man who has given such a dramatic demonstration of repentance?” he asked.
The judge showed little sympathy from the outset. “I understand Mr. Gucci is eighty-one years old, but he was seventy-one when this whole scheme began….And it is certainly the most massive tax fraud I have had anything to do with.” He did, however, agree with Gould that it was also one of the most “amateurish” fraud cases either of them had ever encountered.
“We are not dealing with a man sophisticated in the ways of finance in the United States,” Gould concurred. There was no proof, he said, that my father was the designer or even “active in the mechanics” of the fraud—he simply enjoyed the benefits, as did the rest of the family.
When Papà was asked if he wanted to say anything, his attorney began to speak for him but he interrupted. He could tell that the judge was losing confidence in him and believed that if he addressed him directly—from his heart—he could appeal to his sense of compassion and justice. Reading the transcript later, I realized how nervous he must have been because his normally impeccable English failed him. He spoke of how much Gucci meant to him, his family, his friends, and his collaborators—“Two thousand people, whirling, working around. My work has been my joy.” He admitted he was going against legal advice in speaking but added, “In circumstances so grave, so important, so heavy as this, I cannot refrain.” He apologized for any financial impropriety and accepted that he would have to face the consequences but he went on to explain that in thirty-two years he had probably only signed two checks. He said he rarely went to the bank and “never knew too much.”
Then he started to choke up. “It is no use to try and defend myself for what I’ve done by saying ‘I didn’t know.’ No. No. I am not a child. I’m a man of conscience and I plead guilty. I only pray Almighty God,” he continued, “to give me the strength to overcom
e this day. I am so sorry. Please, I am angry to myself.”
When Gould interjected to tell him he didn’t have to do this he sat back down, vanquished. His lawyer then told the judge that they were witnessing “the most dramatic phase of what is the disintegration of a human being.” He added that there was great dissension in the family. “The man has actually been locked out of the edifice he erected. He made this business. He made the name Gucci a worldwide enterprise and he is now excluded from it, and he is in terrible shape.” As Papà wiped away his tears, his attorney likened his situation to that of Shakespeare’s King Lear, whose controversial dispersal of his realm between his children ends with his dying from a broken heart. “The people [Aldo Gucci] elevated to positions of power and wealth are the people who not only benefited from this scheme but they have destroyed him,” he concluded.
The judge adjourned proceedings before they all filed back silently into the courtroom. The minute I saw my father’s face, I knew that something momentous must have happened. His expression was unfamiliar and my heart sank. Then the clerk announced, “All rise,” and the judge swept in, wearing his gown. When I noticed how set his jaw seemed, I thought I might be sick.
Papà rose to his feet along with his legal team. He was so close I could almost touch him but instead my eyes bored into the back of his head, desperately trying to transmit my undying love and support. Every muscle in my body tensed as the prosecutor opened with a summation of the case and the formal request that the defendant receive a prison sentence. Then Gould made his closing remarks, but instead of listening in silence, the judge repeatedly interrupted to counter many of his points.
In the Name of Gucci Page 23
