The French-American art dynasty scion Guy Wildenstein has been cleared of hiding paintings and properties worth hundreds of millions of euros from the French authorities after one of the biggest tax fraud trials ever held in the country, reports The Guardian.
State prosecutors had wanted the 71-year-old to be sentenced to two years in prison and given a €250m (£217m) fine over what they called “the longest and most sophisticated” tax fraud scheme in modern-day France. But judges in Paris cleared him and seven other defendants of all charges.
The presiding judge, Olivier Geron, said there was a “clear attempt” by Wildenstein and the other defendants to hide assets but that shortcomings in the investigation and in French legislation on tax fraud made it impossible to return a guilty verdict. Both the “powerful and the poor” had an equal right to justice, Geron said.
The celebrated Wildenstein art clan – known in the French art world as simply “les W” – is as famous for its family feuds and eccentricities as its huge collection of old masters. The much-mocked cosmetic surgery of a former sister-in-law of Guy Wildenstein led to her becoming the face of the family’s excesses.
Prosecutors accused the family, whose art business was founded in Paris in the late 19th century, of using a web of opaque trusts and tax havens to avoid paying about €550m in tax.
Guy Wildenstein’s co-defendants were his nephew Alec Jr, his estranged Russian sister-in-law Liouba Stoupakova, a notary, two lawyers and two offshore trusts. The case would probably never have seen the light of day had various Wildenstein widows and former wives, feeling shortchanged, not lifted the lid on the clan’s business dealings.