Hermes heir’s missing millions

Nicolas Puech holds the largest single stake in Hermes, the family-owned business that makes the world’s most-coveted handbags and luxury goods.

The 81-year-old, who has neither wife nor children, announced in 2023 that he intended to adopt his former gardener, identified by some media outlets as Morocco-born Abderrazzack Jadil Butrak.

Puech wanted to leave Butrak, who has a Spanish wife and two children, half of his €12 million fortune after the family looked after him during the covid pandemic.

Setting aside the bureaucratic obstacles in adopting an adult in Switzerland, where Puech lives for tax purposes, he also needed to liquidate his six million Hermes shares.

But where were the shares?

Puech, descended on his mother’s side from Thierry Hermes, who founded the brand in 1837, claims to be the victim of a “huge fraud” and maintained that his financial adviser Eric Freymond  has mismanaged his affairs for 20 years.

According to his lawyers, Puech no longer owns the shares and has lost €12 billion.

Meanwhile, a Geneva appeals court upheld the Public Prosecutor who found no indications of wrongdoing on Freymond’s part.

“The ‘gigantic fraud’ to which Puech was victim, was undetectable to common mortals,” the court pronounced.

Puech’s accusations “lacked clarity”, the tribunal continued, as he had allowed Freymond to manage his growing wealth and his “blind trust” did not imply that the adviser had acted dishonestly, the court added.

The whereabouts of the shares remains a mystery.

““In my view, the shares could either have been bought back by the company or sold to someone else,” Fabian Teichmann, from the Swiss law firm Teichmann International told the Telegraph.