Displaying items by tag: tax evasion

The highly anticipated trial of the Wildenstein family on charges of tax evasion and money laundering was blocked in Paris today, 6 January, due to a legal technicality. The family’s lawyers argued that initiating combined criminal and civil proceedings for the same case was unconstitutional.

In a courtroom packed with more than 20 lawyers and dozens of journalists, the judges found that the question was serious enough to be put before the High Court of Justice.

In 2001, when Daniel Wildenstein lapsed into a coma here just days before his death at 84, French authorities say, his two sons and a team of financial advisers began quickly reshuffling the holdings of this wealthy patriarch who had led one of the greatest art dealing-dynasties of the 20th century.

A convicted tax evader and trout poacher from San Francisco has been charged with mail fraud for allegedly falsely claiming that he had $11 million to buy artwork.

Luke Brugnara, 50, was named in a complaint unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Federal prosecutors accused him of taking delivery of the art and then refusing to pay for the pieces or return them.

Fake Cultural Development Ltd., the design firm of dissident Chinese artist, Ai Wei Wei, will have its business license revoked by Chinese authorities. It is rumored that the district commercial affairs department will pull the license on the grounds that the company failed to re-register. The 55-year-old artist is a designer at the firm while his wife serves as the legal representative.

Ai Wei Wei has been under fire by the Chinese government since officials slammed him with a $2.4 million (15m yuan) tax evasion fine in 2011. His subsequent appeal was shut down in July and a Beijing court rejected his challenge to that decision last week. Ai claims that the firm was unable to properly renew their license because officials had confiscated the documents necessary to re-register during the tax evasion investigation.

Mr. Ai, China’s most famous contemporary artist, promises that the license fiasco will not affect his art. A critic of Communist Party rule, Ai Wei Wei caught the media’s attention when he was detained without explanation for nearly three months in 2011. Upon his release he was hit with the tax evasion claim and fine. Ai Wei Wei says an application has been submitted for a public hearing in regards to the revoked license.