Art dealer Guy Wildenstein, president of Wildenstein & Company (a New York art gallery), has been cleared of money laundering and tax avoidance charges brought against him by French authorities last week, The New York Times reports. The ruling, read out by lead judge Olivier Géron, came as a surprise after it was agreed that the Wildenstein family had demonstrated a ‘clear intention’ to avoid paying inheritance tax and conceal assets by moving money into foreign trust funds and millions of dollars worth of artwork to tax havens. Their actions, however, are said to have fallen into ‘a gray area before France enacted legislation in 2011 to require the declaration of foreign trusts.’ The prosecutor, Monica d’Onofrio, has called the family’s activities ‘the longest and the most sophisticated tax fraud’ in contemporary France.
The Wildensteins, nicknamed by French media as the ‘impressionists of finance’ (a reference to their extensive collection of works by Bonnard, Caravaggio, Fragonard, Poussin and Watteau) have avoided a €250 million fine.
17 January 2016
