Billionaire Guy Wildenstein and other members of his US-based art dealing dynasty were facing up to 10 years in prison today as Paris prosecutors accused them of tax fraud.
In a case already dubbed ‘Dallas-on-Seine’ by the French media, the flamboyant 70-year-old and his relatives are said to have hidden the equivalent of as much as $600 million (around £400 million) from the authorities.
Members of the Wildenstein dynasty are a part of high society in America, where they live in sumptuous apartments in New York City and in vast countryside homes.
An inheritance dispute is at the centre of the trial that opens today – Mr Wildenstein and relatives are said to have used a complicated web of trusts and tax havens to conceal much of their fortune from the taxman.
Guy Wildenstein took over the family's business when his father Daniel died in 2001. He and other members of the dynasty are now said to have hidden around $600 million (£400 million) from the authorities
Mr Wildenstein, pictured with his lawyers Herve Temime (left) and Eric Dezeuze (centre) faces up to ten years in prison if he is convicted
Jocelyn Perisse reached a $2.5 billion divorce settlement with Alec Wildenstein in 1999
Sylvia Roth, who was married to Guy Wildenstein’s late father, Daniel, filed the first criminal complaint in 2001.
This was the year Daniel Wildenstein died, and then the Wildensteins are said to have started hiding their assets.
Guy Wildenstein took over the family business at a time when his brother Alec’s messy divorce from socialite and plastic surgery obsessive Jocelyn Perisse – nicknamed the ‘Bride of Wildenstein’ – was still making international headlines.
It was Jocelyn’s 1999 divorce settlement - a lump sum payment of $2.5 billion (£1.7 billion), plus $100 million (£68 million) each year for 13 years after - that first lifted the lid on the Wildensteins' business dealings.
Alec concentrated on the horse breeding side of the family business, but when he died in 2008, Guy took that over too.
In 2011, French police seized 30 works of art from Wildenstein Institute, alleging that many had been reported as missing or stolen. They included hugely valuable sketches by Edgar Degas and a pastel by Eugene Delacroix.
Then the French taxman alleged that the Wildensteins could owe them some €550 million – the equivalent of $600 million, or £400 million – in unpaid tax.
The Wildenstein family had valued Daniel Wildenstein’s entire estate at a relatively modest $61 million (£41 million), but this figure appeared ridiculous considering all of his assets. They included stables full of thoroughbred racing horses, including Ascot Gold Cup winner Westerner.
Daniel had also enjoyed the use of numerous properties around the world, including a ranch in Kenya that provided the backdrop for the film ‘Out of Africa’.
The Wildensteins deny all charges of tax fraud and money laundering and say they acted within the law at all times. Mr Wildenstein is due in the dock with his nephew Alec Junior and Alec Wildenstein's widow Liouba Stoupakova
The family's patrimony, which included thoroughbred racing horses and paintings by Caravaggio, Monet, and Picasso was held in trusts located in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and Guernsey according to a prosecutor
Mr Wildenstein received a Legion d'Honneur in 2009 from then French President Nicolas Sarkozy
All of these assets were registered in tax havens and trusts, including one called Delta. Delta alone still contains paintings worth an estimated $1 billion (£680 million), according to American tax investigators.
Despite all this, Guy and Alec Wildenstein declared the equivalent of just $44 million (£30 million) for inheritance tax purposes in 2002.
To pay the $19 million (£13 million) bill, they handed over bas-reliefs originally carved out for Queen Marie-Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, guillotined in Paris in 1793.
Due in the dock for the month-long trial are Guy Wildenstein, his nephew Alec Junior Wildenstein, and Alec Wildenstein’s widow Liouba Stoupakova.
Three lawyers and two managers of trusts in Guernsey and the Bahamas are also being prosecuted.
The Wildensteins deny all charges of tax fraud and money laundering, arguing that they acted within the law at all times.
Guy Wildenstein was born in New York, but has maintained close links with Paris. In 2009 the then President Nicolas Sarkozy decorated him with a Legion d’ Honneur.
In an interview last year, Guy Wildenstein said he feared being made a ‘scapegoat’ and that ‘my father never used to talk to me about his business affairs’.
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