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Since the death of her mother, Christina Onassis, 10 years ago, Athina has been raised by Roussel, Christina's fourth husband. He says he has tried to give her a modest, down-to-earth upbringing. The family lives in a stuccoed bungalow on the outskirts of a small Swiss village. 'For Athina it is very important to have the big support of the family and parents. My children are very close, all of them, and that is the best support they can have in life,' Roussel says.

But the heiress' upbringing is the focus of intense acrimony between her father and the four other trustees of her estate. For the past four years, Roussel has been locked in a power struggle with the Greek trustees - known as the 'greybeards' because of their collective longevity - over control of his daughter's fortune. Both sides have launched a blizzard of allegations, ranging from mismanagement and defamation to blackmail and even attempted kidnapping.

ATHINA WAS just three when her mother was found dead at 37, in the bath at a friend's villa in Buenos Aires in 1988. While the autopsy concluded the cause of death was acute pulmonary oedema, it was widely believed she had suffered a heart attack due to overuse of slimming medication. Christina Onassis' battle with her weight was an outward sign of her inner turmoil.

As a child, she had been neglected by her mother, Athina Livanos, a beautiful socialite who was said to have been bemused at having produced such an 'ugly duckling'. Christina was shuttled between hotel suites and homes in Paris, Switzerland, New York and London, in the care of nannies, while her father, Aristotle Onassis, concentrated on empire-building and groomed her elder brother, Alexander, as his heir.

Largely to spite her father, Christina launched into the first of a series of unsuitable marriages at an early age, to an American property developer 28 years her senior. After Alexander died in a plane crash in 1973, however, Aristotle drew closer to his daughter. Only Onassis' second marriage, to Jackie Kennedy, whom Christina referred to as 'the black widow', marred the relationship between father and daughter before the tycoon died in 1975.

After paying Jackie an estimated $30 million (HK$232.2 million) to relinquish her claim on the Onassis fortune - contrary to her father's will, which had allocated his widow just $150,000 a year - Christina inherited half the Onassis empire, with an estimated worth, at that time, of $250 million. This included investments in 87 companies and factories around the world, cash deposits in Athens, Paris, Acapulco and New York, and a vast art collection.

Under the terms of Onassis' will, all profits from the scores of businesses worldwide belonging to the other half of his estate would be sunk into a Liechtenstein-based public-benefit foundation in the name of his son, Alexander S. Onassis. Onassis wanted the foundation not only to provide sponsorship in education, the arts and many other fields, but also to fund a series of international awards that would be seen to rival the Nobel prizes in Sweden.

Christina was the first president of the Onassis Foundation. She handed over the day-to-day management of her half of her father's fortune to Stelios Papadimitriou - a lawyer and longtime business associate of her father's, whom he had made a life member of the foundation's board of directors. But she remained closely involved with the running of the empire.

After two more brief marriages, to the son of a Greek shipping tycoon, and then to a Russian shipping agent with a glass eye, Christina wanted a child. She courted Thierry Roussel, with whom she had become infatuated after a brief affair many years before. The couple married in Paris in 1984. The following year, Athina was born.

Cracks in the relationship appeared within months. Christina was distraught when she discovered Roussel had fathered a baby, Erik, with his long-term mistress, Marianne 'Gaby' Landhage, a Swedish part-time model and translator, while he and Christina were married. After Gaby gave birth to a daughter, Sandrine, two years later Christina and Roussel divorced.

Two years after Christina's death, Roussel married Gaby. Athina, looking slightly cross, was a flower girl at the wedding.

CHRISTINA WAS determined the Onassis fortune should be preserved intact for her 'beloved daughter'. Apart from an annual payment of $1.42 million to Roussel, her will stipulated the rest of her estate be left to Athina under the management of five trustees, until she reached 18. The trustees were Roussel; Papadimitriou, now president of the Onassis Foundation; two former business associates of her father's, Paul Ioannidis and Apostolos Zabelas; and a fourth Greek named Theodore Gabrielidis.

Papadimitriou, Ioannidis and Zabelas were also executors of the will and received one-off bequests of $2 million. Under Swiss law, the management of the estate also falls under the overall supervision of the Autorite de Tutelle, a child-welfare agency.

For a while, the five trustees broadly agreed on the management of the estate. Slowly, however, the relationship between Roussel and Papadimitriou deteriorated. Open hostilities began when the Greek trustees complained about Roussel's spending habits and denied him the use of Christina's private Learjet to fly his family home from a skiing holiday in St Moritz in 1992. They went on to demand that he account fully for the millions he received from his daughter's trust each year to pay for her upkeep.

'I am not a charitable foundation. When you have a private fortune you do not have to publish accounts to anyone,' Roussel scoffs. The Swiss authorities initially agreed with him and ordered that Roussel be paid $6.5 million a year from Athina's trust to maintain his daughter and the property left by her mother, without having to explain how the money was spent. They have since ordered that a record of expenditure be kept.

Now it was Roussel's turn. He accused the trustees of mismanagement and called for the books of his daughter's estate and those of the Onassis Foundation to be opened to independent scrutiny. Since then, he has been sidelined as a trustee and does not attend meetings concerning the management of Athina's estate.

' We look upon [Roussel] with contempt. Who is he? What has he done in his lifetime?' says Papadimitiou, as he sits flicking his worry beads at the Onassis Foundation headquarters, a neoclassical building in the centre of Athens. Papadimitriou estimates that, in the 10 years since Christina's death, the value of Athina's inheritance has more than tripled, and the value of the businesses belonging to the foundation has quadrupled.

He says Roussel has threatened to move his family to France - thereby subjecting his daughter's estate to taxes estimated at $30 million a year - if the trustees do not accede to his demands for more money from his daughter's estate. 'This is blackmail and against his own daughter's interests,' says Papadimitriou.

Roussel responds, 'Who is Papadimitriou? It is not his money. It is the estate of Onassis. Papadimitriou became president of the foundation by accident, only because Christina died. They [the greybeards] were just part of the staff.' Roussel says his aim is to have the management of his daughter's estate put in the hands of independent financial consultants. 'If I wait for her to reach 18, the Swiss authority will have no right to do anything. She will be faced with these four gentlemen, who will say, 'Ah, little Athina, you want your money? Okay. But on our conditions.' ' Infuriated by each other's accusations, Roussel and the Greek trustees are suing each other for defamation. The greybeards' complaints against Roussel are due to be heard by an Athens court on October 30, while Roussel's case against them is scheduled for January 5.

The most bizarre twist in the saga came last year with the revelation that the greybeards had employed ex-Israeli secret agents to spy on Athina and Roussel. Swiss magistrates, alerted by police that the family was being spied upon, discovered the Israeli team had been pretending to be tourists on a mountain-biking tour. The greybeards admitted the surveillance had been carried out on their orders. They said they were checking whether Athina was being adequately protected to fulfil the terms of a multimillion-dollar Lloyd's insurance policy that they, 'like any prudent mother or father', had taken out on her life.

Roussel, who had not been informed about the policy, alleged the greybeards were planning to have him killed and Athina kidnapped to consolidate their control over the Onassis fortune. After considering the evidence, however, the Swiss authorities concluded there was no question of foul play and praised the trustees for being 'mindful' of Athina's security.

Swiss juvenile authorities have begun to consider whether, as Roussel has requested, an independent board of trustees should be appointed to manage Athina's estate. In April they issued an order freezing the main assets relating to her legacy until an independent audit can be carried out.

THE CONFLICT marred a trip by Athina to Athens earlier this year, in which she had her first taste of the adoration her grandfather received from his countrymen. 'Koukla, koukla! [Doll, doll!] May you live as long as the mountains,' the crowds shouted as she walked up the rocky incline of the Acropolis. One young girl handled her an olive branch, whispering, 'Yia na thymase tin Athina' ('Remember Athens'). Athina carried the branch for the rest of her visit.

One old man gave her a framed photograph of Aristotle Onassis, explaining that he had been the shipping magnate's personal photographer 30 years before. Athina smiled but understood only a few of the words until a translator intervened. On the same trip, she called on Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens, to receive his blessing.

The 24 days Athina has spent in Greece since her mother's death have failed to impress the greybeards, who accuse Roussel of isolating her from her country. Papadimitriou says the Athens visit was a publicity stunt engineered by Roussel in advance of the Greek trustees' defamation hearing against him. 'He believes that if she is photographed one afternoon on the Acropolis, she becomes Greek. If she goes and kisses the hand of Archbishop Christodoulos, she becomes Greek Orthodox ... If she comes here 25 days in 10 years, she has a connection with Greece. All she can say is 'Kalimera' [Good morning] and 'Ti kanis?' [How are you?]' snorts Papadimitriou.

The greybeards say they signed an agreement after Christina's death to give Roussel $2.3 million a year specifically for Athina's education, for her to be raised in the Greek Orthodox faith and maintain regular contact with her Greek relatives. This is part of a wider dispute that goes beyond the money wrangles. An emotional battle is being waged by the greybeards to sway Greek public opinion about the way Athina is being brought up. The crucial question for them is whether she will one day become president of the Onassis Foundation, now estimated to be worth about $1 billion.

There is a provision in the statutes of the foundation, stating its president should be an Onassis descendant, eligible on reaching the age of 21, but Papadimitriou insists board members were given discretion, under the terms of Aristotle Onassis's will, to interpret this statute: 'The foundation is a public-benefit foundation. It is not a child's toy. We are not going to give the foundation to someone to play with. We would like Athina to become president if she is fit to do it. But from what we see now, she is not prepared ... not, repeat not.' The greybeards are unhappy that Athina is attending a state school in Switzerland rather than being educated privately: 'How is she going to become president? ... The granddaughter of Onassis goes to a parochial school where the villagers are learning to count cows,' says Papadimitriou. He does not accept the argument that, in Switzerland, as in many European countries, private schools are often considered preferable only for foreign students or children with learning difficulties. 'I feel she is a hostage living in good surroundings but completely isolated,' he says.

Roussel believes the greybeards are just looking for excuses to stop his daughter from becoming president of the foundation. He does not apologise for keeping her close to home and limiting the time she spends in Greece. He wants her to have a normal life for as long as possible. 'It is very difficult to be the child of a very famous person ... They very often finish very badly. They take drugs because they don't have their own personality. What I want is that Athina feels her own personality, and for that the pressure must not be too strong, otherwise she will be crushed.' Some contend that dark-haired Athina sometimes looks awkward and out of place beside her blond siblings. But family friends insist Gaby makes no distinction between her stepdaughter and her own children. They say her relatively humble background - her mother was a seamstress and her father a printer - has enabled her to give Athina more down-to-earth values than Athina's own mother could have done.

Christina used to indulge her daughter. As a toddler, Athina had a $10,000 miniature Ferrari Testarossa in which she could tear around the living room. She also had her own flock of sheep, complete with yodelling Swiss shepherd, after she showed a liking for the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep. Roussel has a different approach. 'I think all my children know that the best fortune is the heart, and that is the most valuable fortune they can have - to be happy and to know that money is not everything.

It is not a gold statue that you must venerate,' he says.

But Roussel's own appetite for money does seem to have caused conflict during the course of his four-year marriage to Christina. After paying her new husband $30 million in compensation for leaving France and moving with her to Switzerland (for tax reasons), Christina is said to have been exasperated by his demands for money. Roussel sank a small fortune into ill-fated business ventures in Algeria and Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. Concerned that her fortune was slowly haemorrhaging into her husband's pockets, Christina eventually placed her estate in trust and appointed Papadimitriou and other members of the Onassis Foundation board as trustees.

At one particularly low point near the end of their marriage, Christina wrote to Papadimitriou, saying she was being pressed by her husband to fire him. Roussel apparently believed the lawyer had too much influence over his wife. Papadimitriou did resign briefly but was reinstated after Christina and Roussel divorced. In the same letter, Christina clearly expresses her concern about her fortune: 'I built a house made in cement, with a door to open the house. In this house, I pull (sic) all my capital, and the door was closed, and the job of the protectors is to keep the door closed.' The greybeards have widely publicised this letter as part of their battle to sway public opinion in their favour. Papadimitriou says that Athina has been kept unnecessarily isolated by Roussel and Gaby, in order to keep her 'subdued and completely subject to [her father's] influence ... Her father is robbing her of her Greek identity. How can she possibly assume the reins of her great legacy? We, of course, want Onassis's granddaughter to take over the foundation, but we will never accept a Trojan horse in our midst.' UNTIL NOW, the greybeards have been winning the publicity war in Greece. 'They attack Thierry, and he is an easy target,' says Pandelis Kapsis, assistant editor of Ta Nea, one of Greece's top-selling tabloids. 'But if they start to attack Athina directly, it will be much more difficult to retain the sympathy of the public.' Papadimitriou does not seem to understand this. 'The Greek people have great expectations of the foundation. They have none of Athina,' he says dismissively.

Kapsis disagrees. 'The Greeks, being proud of Onassis, just want to see Athina come back to Greece to continue the legacy of her grandfather and her mother ... They would like to see her running the family business, residing in Greece and being a Greek tycoon,' he says.

Some question whether the greybeards are living up to the Onassis legend. Over the past 20 years the foundation has donated $185 million for public benefit works, both in Greece and abroad. It has funded the construction of a heart hospital in Athens, awarded more than 2,000 research grants and scholarships, and funded a series of international prizes in the fields of 'international understanding', culture and the environment. Past winners include Ted Turner of CNN, Elizabeth Taylor, Jimmy Carter, Harold Macmillan, Jacques Delors and Vaclav Havel. Some dismiss these awards as little more than a public-relations stunt.

Then there is the question of nepotism. There are 14 members of the foundation's board of directors, which rules by majority vote. Three of them, including Papadimitriou and Ioannidis, have appointed their own sons to replace older members who have resigned, retired or died. 'Our sons were unanimously elected on the basis of their loyalty and qualifications,' Ioannidis insists.

According to Onassis' will, the life members of the foundation board are entitled to two per cent of the net surpluses. Papadimitriou estimates this means they each receive around $40,000 a year before tax. As trustees of Athina's estate, they are also each entitled to claim a further $100,000 a year.

As for Athina, so far she shows little interest in the Onassis heritage. She is more interested in riding and wants to be a trapeze artist. In a rare public comment, the teenager said of her grandfather: 'He was rich. He was loved. I don't know much about him.' Perhaps Roussel has indeed raised the level-headed child he hoped for. But Athina will need an Olympian strength of character to avoid the unhappiness the family wealth brought to the previous two generations.

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