University Diaries » ‘The defendants were first tried on charges of tax fraud in 2016, after they claimed that Guy and Alec Sr.’s father, Daniel Wildenstein, left just $50 billion to the pair on his death in 2001; the bereft sons failed to report assets including an enormous wildlife sanctuary in Kenya, racehorses, stables, a New York apartment, dozens of paintings, and a Gulfstream jet. Tipped off by the pair’s widowed stepmother, Sylvia Wildenstein, French investigators determined that Guy and Alec Sr. had secreted assets totaling roughly $675 billion in offshore accounts and in various locations—detailed in the New York Times as including a free port in Switzerland, a nuclear bunker and a disused firehouse, both in New York State, and a vault in Paris

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‘The defendants were first tried on charges of tax fraud in 2016, after they claimed that Guy and Alec Sr.’s father, Daniel Wildenstein, left just $50 billion to the pair on his death in 2001; the bereft sons failed to report assets including an enormous wildlife sanctuary in Kenya, racehorses, stables, a New York apartment, dozens of paintings, and a Gulfstream jet. Tipped off by the pair’s widowed stepmother, Sylvia Wildenstein, French investigators determined that Guy and Alec Sr. had secreted assets totaling roughly $675 billion in offshore accounts and in various locations—detailed in the New York Times as including a free port in Switzerland, a nuclear bunker and a disused firehouse, both in New York State, and a vault in Paris—in order to avoid paying taxes.’

Beware the evil stepmother.

Beware.

Prosecutors say the Wildenstein family pulled off “the longest and most sophisticated tax fraud” in the history of modern France in part [due] to their savvy use of storage: artworks were scattered across multiple countries, shell corporations, and innocuous holding facilities such as a nuclear bunker in the Catskill Mountains, a former fire station in New York, and sites in the Bahamas and the Channel Islands.

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Clever headline!

ART STASH SET FOR AN HEIR RAID

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NYT

Margaret Soltan, March 5, 2024 12:24PM
Posted in: it's art

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