When Daniel Wildenstein, the world’s wealthiest art dealer, died aged 84 in 2001, his high society clients took comfort in the belief the venerable family business would carry on as usual.
After all, Daniel’s two sons, Guy and Alec, were just as suave, dashing and – if necessary – as ruthless as their dad and the power of the Wildenstein name to get big deals done was undiminished.
The first indication things might be different came with the startling revelation that Daniel had left just $65 million.
This for a man who lived in one of Paris’s grandest residences, whose private art collection was filled with masterpieces by the likes of Picasso, Monet and Renoir, who travelled the world by private jet and owned Europe’s leading racehorse stable.
In the realms of the high-priced art world, tongues began to wag. How, people asked, was this possible?
Today, at France’s highest court – an ornate 18th-Century pile on the site of a former royal palace – the talk is of a naked Russian starlet, an alleged underworld murder contract, a $5 million cosmetic surgery bill and a fluffed-up, homesick poodle called Dolly.
Officially, the case opening in May is about allegations of tax fraud, but to a breathless public it is the story of the vengeance of the Wildenstein wives.
Prosecutors claim that when Daniel died during an operation to remove a tumour in 2001, his sons concealed hundreds of millions of dollars in art treasures, property holdings and cash from the French tax authorities.
Instead of the $65 million cited as Daniel’s worth, the real figure, according to court papers, should have been almost $7 billion. Conning the taxman was one thing. The fatal mistake the Wildensteins appear to have made was trying to fool the women in their lives.
Much of the case is based on testimony from Daniel’s widow, Sylvia, and Alec’s two ex-wives, Jocelyne and Liouba.
All three have alleged the famously secretive dynasty tried to cheat them out of financial settlements.
Daniel Wildenstein and his wife Sylvia.
Dense with money, sex, power and intrigue, the case has been billed as “Dallas-sur-Seine” in the French press, but the fallout is also being felt in the world of politics and especially in the sleek, discreet ranks of the fine art trade.
Ever since the Wildenstein dynasty was founded 135 years ago by Nathan Wildenstein, a sharp-eyed Jewish cloth merchant from eastern France, its ability to out-manoeuvre rivals to secure the best paintings at the best prices has been a source of envy and wonder.
“They are extraordinarily mysterious,” says John Walsh, former director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. “People who have been in the art business all their lives can only guess at what the family actually owns. Think Aladdin’s cave and then some.”
A Paris art dealer, who wishes to remain anonymous, says, “Every now and then, the Wildensteins will sell a painting which hasn’t been heard of for about 50 years and the art world will say, ‘Ah, so that’s where it was’.”
The first rumblings of trouble began shortly before Daniel’s death, when Alec, who ran the lucrative New York business, fell out with Jocelyne, an exotic, Swiss-born socialite with whom he had two children.
Returning to the couple’s $35 million Manhattan townhouse one evening, she claims to have found him with a naked, 19-year-old Russian actress. To make matters worse, Alec then pulled a gun on her, later telling police he had mistaken her for a burglar.
The divorce that followed contained allegations of astonishing excess – $350,000 for a Chanel dress, $10 million jewellery shopping trips and millions spent on extreme plastic surgery.
Jocelyne supposedly wanted to look like one of the jungle cats that roamed the family’s ranch in Kenya, but instead found herself lampooned as “The Bride of Wildenstein”.
Despite living in one of the most expensive homes in New York (plus a French château and the vast African ranch), running a private jet and a full-time household staff of 10, Alec swore on oath that he earned only $130,000 a year.
The money, he explained, was a wage from his father. Everything else was a grace-and-favour arrangement provided for by family trusts.
Eventually, Jocelyne accepted a world-record settlement of $3.3 billion. Yet the struggle to secure it turned her against the Wildenstein family forever.
Back in Paris, Alec’s father, Daniel, was ailing. An old-school operator possessed of great charm and ferocious resolve, he had masterminded the dynasty’s rise to a position of dominance among the world’s art houses.
Sylvia Wildenstein
Sylvia, his second wife, had lived with him for almost 20 years before they married in 1978.
“We were visiting New York,” she told me in an interview shortly before her death in 2010, “and we came out of the hotel and there was a taxi waiting, with my parents in the back, and we headed downtown. He never asked. There was no proposal. He just told me we were getting married. That’s how he was. He made the decisions and I accepted them, because, despite everything, he was the sweetest man.
“When I asked him why, after all this time, he had decided to marry me, he just smiled, and said, ‘To protect you from my children’.”
Not long after Daniel’s funeral, the brothers came to call on Sylvia. According to her version, the meeting was polite but to the point.
She claimed she was told that she must sign away her rights to Daniel’s estate in exchange for a monthly allowance.
Otherwise, she would face devastating inheritance liabilities and a possible criminal investigation into the Wildenstein finances.
Yet, soon after signing, Sylvia was told she must leave the sumptuous home on the Avenue Montaigne – Paris’s smartest street – which she and Daniel had shared for 40 years. It was in this privileged neighbourhood that she liked to meet her friends for lunch each day and walk her meringue-like dog, Dolly, under the chestnut trees.
“They said we had to be out in nine days,” Sylvia told me, “and when I said this was impossible, I was given a month. I had to move to a smaller place near a traffic island. Poor Dolly. For me, it was bad, but I have been through bad things. For Dolly, it was unbearable. I could not forgive them.”
When Sylvia discovered her allowance had been cut and four of her racehorses transferred into a family trust, she called a lawyer.
“I thought,” she said, “if they don’t keep their word, they will have to pay.”
It was from this call that this trial stems. On the receiving end was one of Paris’s celebrated lawyers, Claude Dumont-Beghi, a chic, fifty-something brunette with a reputation for taking on rich and powerful interests. Some years ago, when an airline refused to pay her fees, she sued and ended up owning a Boeing 747.
“I try not to get personally involved,” she tells me from her office near the Longchamp racecourse, where Daniel’s horses galloped to victory. “But I did feel Sylvia had been badly treated and I thought there must be something strange going on when enormously rich people could pretend to be poor.”
Claude publicly alleged that the Wildensteins were hiding their wealth in what she characterised as a dubious web of trusts held in offshore tax havens and that priceless works of art were routinely shuttled around the world to disguise their true domicile.
In France, the Wildensteins enjoy the status of unofficial royalty. They give generously to charity, entertain in epic style, bestow an aura of sophistication on any event they attend and endow the Wildenstein Institute, containing the world’s largest collection of books and documents on the history of art.
When police raided the building four years ago, they found 30 valuable works of art hidden in the vaults. Several of these are now the subject of further lawsuits by collectors who claim the Wildensteins had no right to them.
The decision to prosecute the family was considered sufficiently momentous for it to be announced in the French parliament. Down the years, many government figures have had close relationships with the Wildensteins – notably former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who hopes to return to office next year – leading to claims that the family has enjoyed political protection.
The most poignant figure in the case is perhaps the third Wildenstein wife, Liouba, 43, a Russian-born model turned sculptress, who married Alec in 2000 following his divorce from Jocelyne.
She says their time together was “wonderfully happy”, much of it spent on the 3000-hectare ranch in Kenya, but when Alec died in 2008, Liouba, too, had unexpected problems securing an inheritance.
She claims lawyers told her Alec had large debts and to avoid being liable she would have to sign away all rights to his estate. When she protested, she says, “they declared war on me”, to the point that a contract was put out on her life.
“They went for me psychologically,” she told a French magazine earlier this year. “They attacked my integrity, they tried to suffocate me financially and, in the end, they tried to poison me.”
Although prosecutors accept Liouba has co-operated with the investigation, she faces a money-laundering charge, linked to the wider tax fraud allegations.
“It is absurd,” she says. “I have received nothing. I have been left penniless. I can’t afford to repair the heater in my apartment. I had to sell my clothes. Now the tax people say I owe them $125 million.”
Guy Wildenstein, the current head of the dynasty, has fought a long, expensive battle to stop the case coming to court, employing armies of lawyers to seek a less dramatic resolution. In January, however, a judge ruled that Guy, 70, Alec’s son, Alec Jnr and three financial aides must stand trial. They could each face 10 years in jail and huge fines.
Guy – dapper, socially reticent and religious – says he believed the family’s trusts were legal and denies any attempt at tax-dodging.
“These arrangements were made by my father,” he said in his only interview. “He never talked to me about things like this, never consulted me. He knew finance was not my strong point. After his death, when we were criticised for not paying enough tax, I ordered we stop using the trusts.”
He claims the financial offer to Sylvia was sketched out by her husband and reflected his fear that
she would not be able to manage a complicated inheritance. Of Liouba, he said, “I do not respect her word.”
Of particular interest to those who follow the affairs of the Wildensteins is the light the trial will throw on their way of life and the treasures they own. Nathan coined the motto, “Never buy a painting you can’t afford to keep”, and the family has stayed true to his word, saving the best for themselves. By some estimates, their horde contains more than 10,000 paintings.
In amassing such wealth and the power that goes with it, the family appears to have forgotten that art is also a hallmark of civilised values.
The Wildenstein women are about to offer a timely reminder.
This story originally appeared in the May issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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