Alvaro became president of the company, owned a 25.1% stake and controlled another 25% on behalf of Maria Leonor.

FORBES: Slippery Situation

Later that year Alvaro exercised his power of attorney and purchased Maria Leonor's share in Fruit Shippers for an undisclosed sum.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The judge said Alvaro's use of power of attorney to purchase Maria Leonor's shares would have undoubtedly raised "interesting questions" about his role as a fiduciary under English law.

FORBES: Magazine Article

They claimed in a suit filed in New York that Alvaro promised he would always share control of the business and would never acquire or vote shares held on Maria Leonor's behalf.

FORBES: Magazine Article

His mother, Leonor, unofficially took charge of Polar.

FORBES: The beer baron

For years Alvaro had held power of attorney over family assets owned by Maria Leonor. (His older brother had little involvement with the company.) In 1994 sisters Isabel and Maria Elena unsuccessfully challenged the power of attorney.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Ms. LEONOR RAMIREZ (Loan Officer, Gold Financial Services): It's just been a big change for us, going from - leaving the subprime lending, now just focusing on FHA. So it's a totally new market for me to go.

NPR: Time for Renovation at the FHA?

The setting is a cramped, chilly room off a desolate courtyard, sometime in the late nineteenth century, where a poor, elderly couple, Gebo (Michael Lonsdale) and Doroteia (Claudia Cardinale), are haunted by the eight-year absence of their prodigal son, whose wife, Sofia (Leonor Silveira), they have taken in.

NEWYORKER: Gebo and the Shadow

While the sisters have abandoned the legal fight, their lawyer made some nasty (and, as far as the record shows, unfounded) accusations in the London court: that Alvaro bribed an Ecuadorian judge and that Alvaro's tactics hastened their father's death, as well as the death of his fourth sister, Maria Leonor , a drug abuser who lay in a coma for eight years.

FORBES: Slippery Situation