Angelina Jolie, 47, has responded to Brad Pitt’s lawsuit over the sale of her Château Miraval stake, with a countersuit that also alleges he has been “waging a vindictive war” against her since their divorce in 2016, according to documents obtained by PEOPLE.
Papers apparently state Jolie’s business, Nouvel, is seeking more than $250 million (about R4 billion)) in damages.
PEOPLE says the documents states: “These counterclaims lay bare the true nature of Pitt’s egregious misconduct. To be clear, it is Pitt, and not Jolie, Nouvel or any of the other defendants, who has acted in a hostile, destructive, and illegal manner. Pitt’s behaviour has caused serious harm to Nouvel.”
Jolie’s attorneys claim Pitt, 58, “masterminded a so-far-successful plan to seize control of” Château Miraval in southern France, in which the couple bought a controlling stake.
The papers reportedly allege Pitt has “frozen Nouvel out of Château Miraval and treats it as his personal fiefdom”, and has allegedly “wasted its assets, spending millions on vanity projects, including more than $1 million on swimming pool renovations and other funds restoring a recording studio”.
The legal filing reportedly goes on to claim Jolie, who shares six children with Brad, negotiated for months with the “Fight Club” actor to sell him her half of the winery, but says he “made an eleventh-hour demand for onerous and irrelevant conditions, including a provision designed to prohibit Jolie from publicly speaking about the events that had led to the breakdown of their marriage”.
According to the filing, Jolie was unwilling to agree to the “hush” clause and sold her share to Tenute del Mondo, a subsidiary of Stoli Group, in October 2021.
In his own lawsuit in June, Pitt had accused Jolie of damaging the reputation of the wine business by selling her half to a “stranger”.
His legal team wrote in the documents the winery became his passion project that grew into “a multimillion-dollar global business and one of the world’s most highly regarded producers of rosé wine”.
The actor also claimed Jolie contributed “nothing” to Miraval’s success.
But the new filing from Jolie’s legal team accused Pitt of “gaslighting” by “claiming that he is the victim in order to cover up the harm he intentionally caused to his ex-wife (excluding her from the business and holding the most significant part of her net worth hostage) and the business (asset stripping and foolish spending)”.
It goes on: “But Pitt should look in the mirror because it is he, and not the Stoli Group, who carries baggage, some of it recent front page news, that is detrimental to Château Miraval's business.”
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