After two acquittals in 2017 and 2018, the heirs of the Wildenstein family of art dealers and their advisors were convicted on Tuesday March 5 by the Paris Court of Appeal for colossal tax fraud. Guy Wildenstein, 78, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, including two years, as well as a fine of one million euros, when his nephew, Alec Junior, was sentenced to two years’ suspended prison sentence and 37,500 euros fine.
The Court of Appeal found them guilty of having concealed, during the successions of the patriarch Daniel Wildenstein (died in 2001) and Alec senior (died in 2008), considerable assets in trusts, legal structures Anglo-Saxon which house assets entrusted by their owner to a trusted person (the trustee).
Among the assets concerned: a sumptuous ranch in Kenya, real estate in New York and master paintings valued at a billion euros. Some of the trusts were nevertheless excluded by the court of appeal in its decision.
Two lawyers and a notary were given sentences ranging from one year in prison to 18 months, as well as fines ranging from 37,500 to 100,000 euros. Finally, two wealth managers were fined the maximum amount of 187,500 euros. The widow of Alec senior, Liouba Stoupakova, was sentenced to three months in prison for complicity in money laundering.
The defendants were acquitted by the court in 2017 then by the court of appeal in 2018, the courts considering in particular that before 2011 and a law on trusts, there was no sufficiently clear reporting obligation in the law. French. But on January 6, 2021, the Court of Cassation overturned the decision and ordered a third trial, which took place from September 18 to October 4, 2023.
