Heir to Mango fashion empire investigated over billionaire father’s cliff fall death

Police investigating the death of Mango’s billionaire founder have reportedly turned to his son as a possible suspect.

Isak Andic, 71, who built the fashion empire from the ground up, died on December 14 last year after falling more than 300ft.

He had been hiking with his eldest son, Jonathan, in the Montserrat mountains near Barcelona.

Detectives initially ruled his death accidental but are now treating it as a potential homicide, according to Spanish media.

Inconsistencies in Jonathan’s statements have prompted a judicial review, according to La Vanguardia newspaper.

The family has said it is confident that Jonathan was innocent and that it would ‘continue to cooperate’ with the authorities.

Police are investigating Jonathan Andic, 44, following what police said were contradictory accounts of events, according La Vanguardia.

However, the police have found no direct or definitive evidence that explains what happened on the day Isak died, the paper reported.

The family said in a statement yesterday that it ‘will continue to cooperate, as it has done until now, with the competent authorities’.

‘Furthermore, it trusts that this process will be concluded as soon as possible and that it will prove Jonathan Andic’s innocence.’

Andic, who was born in Istanbul in 1953, emigrated to Catalonia with his relatives in the late 1960s.

The businessman started selling T-shirts to fellow high school students. He then progressed to running a wholesale business and sold clothes in street markets before opening his first Mango store in 1984.

It became one of Europe’s foremost fashion empires, spread across 120 countries with some 2,800 stores and over 16,000 staff.

At the time of his death Isak Andic was non-executive chairman of the fashion brand and worth £3.35bn, according to Forbes

Jonathan is listed as the vice-chairman of the board on the Mango Fashion Group’s website.

In a statement following his death, Mango CEO Tony Ruiz said Isak had ‘dedicated his life to Mango’.

He added: ‘His legacy reflects the achievements of a business project marked by success, and also by his human quality, his proximity and the care and affection that he always had and at all times conveyed to the entire organisation.’

Mango was approached for comment.

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