The estate of the late Michael Hutchence, frontman for the internationally successful Australian band INXS until his death in a Sydney hotel room in 1997, has been valued at nothing, according to reports.
It had been estimated that Hutchence had a personal fortune of between 10 and 20 million Australian dollars (up to 15 million US dollars). However, the executors of his will have told his family that the balance of his estate as of July was zero, his mother Patricia Glassop told The Sydney Morning Herald.
According to the letter issued to the Hutchence family, the star had 506 dollars in cash and 572 dollars in an INXS bank account at the time of his death. After selling off some of his possessions, including guitars, artwork, real estate and a Harley Davidson motorcycle, there was nothing left.
In his will Hutchence intended to leave 250,000 US dollars each to Amnesty International and Greenpeace with half of the rest of his estate going to his daughter Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily, who he had with the late TV presenter Paula Yates.
However, the estate did not include a string of properties in Australia worth more than 10 million dollars, a villa in southern France, a house in London, a development in Indonesia, numerous luxury cars and royalty payments from INXS, the paper said.
These assets had been placed in a complex array of companies and trusts from Liberia to the British Virgin Islands over which he had limited control to protect his wealth, the report said.
Hutchence died in November 1997, aged 37. A coroner ruled his death to be suicide.
