Art collector and billionaire sugar giant heir Guy Ullens has filed a lawsuit against his son, Nicolas Ullens, for the fatal shooting of his second wife and Nicolas’s stepmother, 70-year-old collector and philanthropist Myriam Ullens. On March 29, Nicolas shot six rounds at Myriam’s car in front of her home in Lasne, Belgium, killing her and wounding Guy’s leg, before turning himself in to the authorities the following day. The news of the lawsuit was first reported by the Belgian news outlet De Standaard.
Nicolas admitted to firing the gun, stating that there was an ongoing dispute regarding the Ullens’ inheritance structure that Myriam was allegedly interfering with. Nicolas’s sister, Brigitte Ullens, stood by him in an interview with De Standaard two days after the incident, saying that the Ullens family “had been ravaged for years” and that Myriam wanted to keep Guy’s fortune to herself.
“She even forbade Dad to keep in touch with us,” Brigitte continued. “In recent years, Dad’s mental state has deteriorated and she benefited from that.”
Brigitte alleged that everything came to a head on the day of the shooting when it was revealed that Myriam had put the family’s villa up on the market. “‘What was she going to do with that money? I don’t know, but I guess she’d keep it to herself,” Brigitte told De Standaard, calling Nicolas a “very sweet man” who had just become a grandfather.
Guy was treated at a hospital for the wounds in his leg and discharged quickly, and has filed a civil suit against Nicolas with Belgian attorney Nathalie Buisseret. Buisseret did not immediately respond to Hyperallergic’s request for comment and has declined to comment specifically on the case to other news outlets, but confirmed to De Standaard that Guy is physically on the mend “considering the circumstances.”
Guy has been an avid art collector since the 1960s, with a large selection of art and antiquities hailing from China due to his business relations in the nation. Guy met Myriam in 1991, and the couple married eight years later in 1999. In 2007, through their joint foundation, Guy and Myriam opened the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China, which has since expanded into a three-building campus with over a million visitors a year.
Nicolas, who has been detained since his admission to the authorities, appeared for a brief court session in the city of Nivelles on April 3 and was ordered to remain in detention for another month. Nicolas’s attorneys did not fight this decision.
