His name was Esteban Desclaux. Known in his time as ‘Chevalier Desclaux,’ this French businessman, who had ties to the army and the nobility, amassed an immense fortune in the 19th century through the shipping industry. Nearly 200 years later, the staggering scale of his wealth continues to attract potential heirs in search of a share of the treasure that may have been lost along the way. One of these people is a Swiss citizen living in Mallorca who is tracing the whereabouts of a fortune that once included gold, jewels, castles, palaces, lands, and other real estate. A legacy straight out of a fairy tale. An inheritance “of incalculable value,” according to the team of lawyers handling the case, the Osuna law firm.
The family’s connection to the Balearic Islands began when Desclaux married a woman from Menorca, Maria Umbert Taltavull. The couple’s only son had three children from two different marriages. The family tree extends to two great-granddaughters of Mr. Desclaux, who is a Swiss national; one of them lives in Mallorca (the other lives in Lausanne, Switzerland). Both women, who are about 50 years old, met some time ago while searching for an inheritance that has been passed down from generation to generation.
This is a bicentennial succession process that, as is well known, has also involved renunciations, family disputes, and legal proceedings over these two centuries. And no one knows into how many parts this inheritance might have been divided, or whether one of these parts might have become ownerless as a result of a renunciation or a null legal act, for example.
The lawyers’ task is to reconstruct the entire chain of succession using property records and other documentary archives in order to trace an inheritance that two Mallorcan families were already claiming in the 1960s. At that time, the fortune was estimated at 300 million Dutch guilders and 50 million gold francs. At today’s exchange rate, that would be the equivalent of several hundred million euros – and that’s without taking all the properties into account. One of them, it is said, is a castle in Monaco.
The Balearic press had already reported on this search in the 1960s under the headline “Two Mallorcan families claim to be the only heirs of the fabulous fortune of Chevalier Desclaux.” Attorney Fernando Osuna, an expert in family law, inheritance law, and military law, is known, among other things, for having secured the recognition of the illegitimate children of singer-songwriter Carlos Baute, soccer player Samuel Eto’o, and matador Manuel Díaz ‘El Cordobés‘. He admits that, in the case of Desclaux’s fortune, the investigation could take years. A fortune this large is worth the wait.
