In The News: Eva Rausing, Addicted Philanthropist Dead

On Monday, July 9^th, 2010 Eva Rausing, philanthropist and wife of multibillionaire Hans Rausing was found dead in an upstairs bedroom in their townhome in Belgravia, London.

Eva Louise Rausing (7 March 1964 – 9 July 2012) was born Eva Louise Kemeny, the daughter of Tom Kemeny, a PepsiCo executive. She was a philanthropist, and a member of the Rausing family, which owns the food packaging business Tetra Pak. She was the wife of Hans Kristian Rausing, whom she met in a rehab clinic in her native U.S.,and with whom she had four children. [Wikipedia, 2012]

Eva and Hans donated large amounts of money to drug treatment charities and seemed to be champions in the fight against of drug abuse. Eva was a patron of the Mentor Foundation, which worked to help people out of addiction and has the Queen of Sweden, Queen Noor of Jordan and Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia as honorary trustees. Prince Charles even considered Hans as a “very special kind of philanthropist”.

Unfortunately, they were really facing a drug problem themselves and it wasn’t something new. Eva and Hans met while receiving treatment for drug abuse back in the 1980’s. They seemed to be living a solid life in recovery until Eva was caught with crack cocaine and heroin on a visit to the US Embassy in the Summer of 2008.  They recently lost custody of their four children to Hans’ sister and tabloids released photos of Hans looking very thin and ill.

We’ve said it over and over again. Addiction kills and it’s not to be seen as a testament of will power. This is truly a tragedy considering that these people had many opportunities available to them in sense of wealth but battled their own demons with drugs. No official cause of death has been determined, as a postmortem done on Tuesday resulted as “inconclusive”, but the police did arrest and question Hans Rausing after the discovery of Eva’s body was made. The worst part about all this is not only did she lose her life but media outlets are reporting that her dead body might have been in the house up to a week before it was discovered.

 Update: July 17th, 2012 – Eva Rausing’s husband, Hans Rausing, appears in court charged with preventing the lawful and decent burial of his wife’s body.

Addiction doesn’t have to end in death. Choose life, call us now at 1-877-711-4673.

Sources:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/addicted-philanthropist-is-found-dead-in-england-644312/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/11/tetra-pak-heir-wife-body?newsfeed=true

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Rausing