Angelina Jolie might have sold her interest in her investment corporation Nouvel LLC last year, but that doesn’t mean the company is staying out of the ongoing legal battles between Jolie and her ex-husband Brad Pitt.
Nouvel has reportedly filed suit against Pitt for a staggering $250 million in damages. The suit accuses Pitt of all but stealing a French vineyard and castle out from under Jolie and funneling the revenue from it into various “vanity projects” in order to keep it out of her hands in their divorce.
The company’s suit accuses Pitt of trying to “secretly move assets” in the company and the Chateau Miraval, a French castle that fell under its purview. The suit is in response to an earlier one filed by Pitt against Jolie, alleging that she’d sold her own stake in Miraval without his required authorization.
Nouvel wants at least $250 million in damages from Pitt for various financial movements he made while the company was under his partial control. The lawsuit is full of Pitt’s alleged schemes, which it claims were performed by Pitt in order to ensure that Jolie “would never see a dime” from its “tens of millions of dollars in profits.”
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Some of those schemes include funneling millions of dollars in Nouvel revenue into “vanity projects” like a million-dollar swimming pool and a recording studio. Pitt is even alleged to have given away half of Nouvel’s registered trademarks to an unnamed friend for free.
The suit goes on:
“In retaliation for the divorce and custody proceedings, Pitt embarked on a multi-faceted, years-long campaign to seize control of Chateau Miraval and appropriate the company’s assets for his benefit and that of his own companies and friends.
“Appointing himself the rightful owner of Chateau Miraval, his twin objectives were to usurp the value of Jolie’s company, Nouvel, and to obtain sole ownership of Chateau Miraval.”
Chateau Miraval (MICHEL GANGNE/AFP via Getty Images)
The company’s suit also takes issue with Pitt’s conduct after Jolie sold her interest in it to beverage conglomerate Stoli Group. It says Pitt “lied” about its owner Yuri Shefler’s relationship with the Russian government, and that Pitt is also subject to a criminal complaint made by Nouvel in France.
Pitt and Jolie purchased the Chateau Miraval in happier times in 2008 through their respective investment entities. But since their divorce in 2016, it’s been at the center of various legal maneuvers between the two.