(Bloomberg) -- A son of the late Joseph Safra, one of the world’s richest bankers who died in December at age 82, said he intends to challenge his disinheritance from his father’s will in a court proceeding in Switzerland.

Alberto Safra on Thursday asked a court in New York to let him pursue evidence in the U.S. for his challenge. He said his father, who had Parkinson’s disease when he died, lacked the mental acuity to execute three new wills in November and December 2019.

“Mr. Safra was under no condition at that time to voluntarily and knowingly make changes to his wills, let alone changes that would deprive petitioner, a devoted son who had loyally served his father for years in the family business, of his rightful inheritance,” he said in court papers filed in Manhattan federal court.

Alberto, 41, is one of the four children of Joseph Safra. The Safras own banks in Brazil, Switzerland and the U.S., as well as a real estate portfolio that includes the Gherkin building in London and a stake in banana company Chiquita Brands International. The family’s fortune is estimated at around $16 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Alberto walked away from the board of the family’s Sao Paulo-based Banco Safra SA in 2019. Just weeks after he left, his father “hastily changed his wills in order to cut the petitioner off from his rightful inheritance and, correspondingly, increase the petitioner’s siblings’ share of the late Joseph Safra estate,” according to the court papers.

His siblings oversee the family’s banking empire, with the oldest child, Jacob, in charge of international operations and the youngest, David, overseeing the Brazilian firm. His sister, Esther, is an educator and runs a school in Sao Paulo.

Alberto said the changes in his father’s will were made as a result of “undue influence of individuals who exploited Joseph Safra’s vulnerable physical and mental condition,” according to court documents. He said he learned about the changes only after his father died.

After leaving his family’s lender, Alberto created ASA Investments, a Sao Paulo-based asset-management firm with about 90 employees and offices in Rio de Janeiro and New York. Alberto left the Safra business in Brazil “under a lot of pressure from his family,” he said in the court documents.

“In this context, certain family members began retaliating against the petitioner by opposing his attempts to visit his father, isolating him from the various family businesses and, as he later found out, taking decisions to harm his rights,” according to the documents. 

(Updates with details from court filing starting in second paragraph.)

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