Athina Onassis, heiress to one of the world’s most famous fortunes, has sold the Greek island where her grandfather Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy to a Russian billionaire. Dmitry Evgenevich Rybolovlev, an investor, philanthropist and owner of the AS Monaco Football Club is said to have paid about $150 million for the idyllic isle named Skorpios for his 24-year-old socialite daughter Ekaterina. Rybolovlev, whose fortune is estimated at about $9 billion, beat out the likes of Madonna, Giorgio Armani, Bill Gates and Roman Abramovich, all of whom were reportedly vying for the prize property. Aristotle Onassis bought the island in 1962 for about $10,000 and used it to entertain various celebrities including his lover, opera singer Maria Callas.
In 1968 he married Jackie Kennedy there, at which point she became known as Jackie O. Athina Onassis, an avid equestrienne based in Brazil with an estimated net worth of at least $1 billion, has only visited the island once. There is a luxurious, though not ostentatious, villa on the island known as the Pink House which Onassis built for Jackie, along with tennis courts and lavish gardens — though most of the island remains undeveloped. A spokesman for Ekaterina Rybolovlev told the London Guardian the purchase was made as “a long-term financial investment" and stated there is “significant potential for further improvement of the island's using environmentally friendly technology.”
