DNA on straw may win share of Lamborghini will
Italian beautician claims to be granddaughter of sports car inventor after heiress’s saliva was collected secretly
‘My daughter doesn’t want money, she just wants the truth’
A BEAUTICIAN from Naples claims she is the secret granddaughter of the founder of Lamborghini sports cars and says she has the DNA – taken from a drinking straw – to prove it.
Flavia Borzone, 35, instructed a private detective to retrieve a drinking straw from model, socialite and singer Elettra Lamborghini in order to obtain her DNA, believing they are sisters.
Ms Borzone says she is the illegitimate daughter of Tonino Lamborghini, 76, whose father, Ferruccio Lamborghini, created the luxury car in northern Italy in 1963.
The company is now owned by the Volkswagen Group through its subsidiary, Audi.
Ms Borzone’s claims emerged from a court case in Bologna on Monday. Experts from the University of Ferrara said the DNA sample shows a genetic match between Ms Borzone and Ms Lamborghini, showing they are sisters. Lawyers for the beautician said the
DNA link was “irrefutable”.
The genetic material had been collected by a private detective from a straw that Ms Lamborghini had used when she drank an iced coffee, the court heard. One Italian newspaper called it “the straw of a thousand secrets”.
Ms Borzone says she was born from a relationship between her mother, Rosalba Colosimo, and Mr Lamborghini, after they met at a bus stop in Milan in 1980.
Mr Lamborghini was allegedly driving by when he noticed her and offered her a lift. The two struck up a relationship and Ms Borzone was born in 1988.
“My daughter doesn’t want money, she just wants the truth,” Ms Colosimo said. “If it had been all about the money, I would have done all this when Flavia was two years old.” Mr Lamborghini is a businessman who runs the eponymous Tonino Lamborghini Ltd, a company that produces luxury goods and accessories inspired by the legendary car firm founded by his father.
The company, which also has interests in hotels and resorts, is worth around €400 million (£341 million), according to Italian media reports.
Convinced that she is the daughter of Tonino Lamborghini, Ms Borzone went public with the claims on television programmes and in gossip magazines. Mr Lamborghini then accused her, and her mother, of defamation and the case has now gone to court.
Ms Borzone says that in 2019 she drove from her home in Naples to the town of Funo, near Bologna in northern Italy, hoping to meet the man she claims is her father. “She had had this niggle for a long time,” said her lawyer, Gian Maria Romanello. “She did not have the same physical features as her supposed father. When he and her mother argued, she would often hear her mother say: ‘She’s not even your daughter’.”
Ms Borzone covertly recorded a conversation she had with Mr Lamborghini and it was presented in court, according to La Repubblica newspaper. “In the conversation, Mr Lamborghini admitted to having had a relationship with Colossimo [Ms Borzone’s mother],” the lawyer told the court.
Mr Lamborghini’s lawyers said the DNA material was taken from the straw used by his daughter without her consent and was therefore “unlawful”.
The trial was adjourned until March.