Chemanel was found with a gunshot wound to the head. Aged 49, he apparently leaves behind a mansion, a hunting ground, an agricultural machinery company and three luxury cars. He also leaves behind a wife and two daughters.
The year 2003 is now a distant memory, when he was still a humble local council employee in a small rural village in Galicia. He led a normal, happy life. But those 9.5 million euros from that fateful lottery draw six years ago ruined his life.
To begin with, two months after the prize draw, he turned up at the town hall in his new red Ferrari. He was decked out in gold from head to toe – a watch, bracelets and necklaces. He bought some land where he set up his brand-new agricultural machinery hire business. An investment of a fifth of the prize money which, year after year, brought him more losses than profits and which he was never able to recoup. The locals wouldn’t hire out their machinery, so he had to convert the business into a haulage firm with dozens of lorries (the best ones) and staff (the locals). He eventually went into administration a few months before he shot himself.
There was also a sordid, dark episode in which he went missing for 24 hours and returned home bruised. He reported a «express kidnapping’ by criminals from the East. The police didn’t believe him. When he was later asked about those events, he replied in the Galician way: ‘AndYou’ll find out«
Apart from the cars, the jewellery and his inexperienced and incompetent squandering as a businessman, his life as a nouveau riche was not particularly ostentatious. He did not even indulge in excesses. He invested, lost and spent vast sums, but a great deal of his money also vanished on gifts, handouts, extortion and the scheming of various associates. His temperament soured and he withdrew into himself.
That 2003 Primitiva lottery win led to his financial and personal ruin. In short, those ten million drove him to take his own life in barely six years. His mansion, his hunting ground, his insolvency proceedings, his wife and daughters all miss him and remember what their loved one was like before the nightmare of the €9.5 million Primitiva win.
The grim list of sudden millionaires who have taken their own lives could be added to the long list of lives that the market crash has claimed and will continue to claim. Some of these suicides are linked exclusively to the financial crisis, but others are driven by a personal inability to manage such fortunes. Appropriate professional help would undoubtedly have prevented most of them.
Sudden fortunes in the form of lottery winnings, inheritances or high-profile careers (artists and sportspeople), where wealth is also accumulated suddenly over just a few years, require very specific wealth management and, above all, wealth coaching. Our specialisation in advising and coaching clients with sudden fortunes is something of which we are particularly proud at Cluster Family Office. Without that training provided by competent and honest professionals, the Jurassic Park syndrome It will be relentless, with ruin being the lesser of two evils.
We cannot stress this enough: unlike a traditional business or corporate fortune, with a sudden fortune there is no room for error and no second chances.