Lollobrigida wedding puzzle deepens
Star’s ex-lover says she arranged proxy marriage
The mystery over Gina Lollobrigida’s “fake wedding” deepened this week after her former lover insisted he had legitimately married the Italian film star, despite her not being at the ceremony.
Javier Rigau y Rafols, a 51-yearold Spanish businessman, said Lollobrigida had consented to the wedding, willingly signed all the necessary documents and had agreed to marry him by proxy.
Lollobrigida, who was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the 1960s, filed a complaint this week with police in Rome, claiming she had recently discovered her much younger ex-lover had “secretly” married her without her knowledge.
The 85-year-old star said she would never have consented to the wedding, which took place in November 2010 in a church in Barcelona, and accused Rigau of paying an impostor to stand in for her.
He was trying to lay claim to her multimillion-dollar estate, which includes properties in Rome, Sicily and Monte Carlo, she alleged.
But Rigau launched a robust counter-attack Thursday, insisting through a lawyer that his former lover had been “fully aware” of the marriage and had arranged the ceremony herself.
“It is impossible that Ms. Lollobrigida was not aware of the wedding,” said lawyer Teresa Bueyes. She insisted the marriage was completely legitimate and that Lollobrigida had travelled to Barcelona in August 2010 to request permission to marry “in absentia.”
“Gina Lollobrigida came here to Barcelona and in front of a notary asked for that permission,” she said. “To get married by power of attorney is a very specific request, you have to say who is going to represent you at the wedding and to specify the kind of wedding it will be — that is what she did and it is totally legitimate,” Bueyes told Spanish TV channel Telecinco, dismissing claims that Rigau tricked the star into the proxy marriage to inherit her fortune.
“It is Mr. Rigau that has the bigger fortune … and in any case he went to lawyers in Rome and signed a document rejecting any inheritance from her on her death,” she said. Lollobrigida met Rigau at a party in Monte Carlo in the 1980s. They announced plans to marry in 2006 but soon afterward Lollobrigida called the wedding off.
Bueyes did not offer an explanation why Lollobrigida would want to marry her ex-boyfriend four years after they allegedly split. She said only that Lollobrigida had opted for a marriage by proxy in order to “avoid a media spectacle.”
Lollobrigida claims to have discovered the “fake” marriage on the Internet written by a former business partner of Rigau.