Daniel Wildenstein's widow Sylvia fights for $14bn legacy

A FEW days after the burial of Daniel Wildenstein, one of the world's greatest art dealers, his widow was told that he had been bankrupt.

A FEW days after the burial of Daniel Wildenstein, one of the world's greatest art dealers, his widow, Sylvia, 76, was told that he had been bankrupt and that she risked a summons from the taxman. Allegedly urged on by Daniel's two sons from his first marriage, she renounced her rights to his legacy.

After six years of trying to establish the true value of this legacy, Sylvia now estimates it at $14 billion.

Her husband left a Caravaggio worth $111 million, up to 10,000 other paintings including works by Monet, Picasso and Cezanne, a 26,000ha estate in Africa and one in the Virgin Islands.

A judge has now ruled the renunciation of her claim invalid, and this week a Paris prosecutor will launch an investigation, giving Sylvia the chance to testify against her relatives and present the evidence she has amassed.

"I spent 40 years of my life with Daniel, and then his sons Guy and Alec betrayed me," she said last week. A French magazine has dubbed the saga "Dallas-on-Seine" after the US television series.

The daughter of a Hungarian grain merchant and a Czech journalist, Sylvia grew up in Israel, where she served as a lieutenant in the army. She then worked as a model and danced on Broadway before meeting her future husband in Paris in 1964.

She never took an interest in Daniel's business and recalled: "The men of the family were the only ones who looked after business, and they took care of us women in the most majestic way. We were spoilt rotten."

Daniel could afford to spoil her. "The paintings hanging in our homes changed often, but in New York there was a Cezanne above my bed, a Renoir in front of it and a Monet on one side," she said.

The couple travelled on private jets and helicopters. They owned racehorses and won at Ascot. They holidayed at their private island and at a ranch in Kenya, where Out of Africa was filmed. It had 55 lakes, a golf course, a racecourse and 366 servants.

Before he died in 2001 Daniel told Sylvia: "If anything happens to me, two lawyers will come to you immediately to sort everything out."

She said last week: "I've waited nine years. They never came."

She now lives in a large flat in Paris owned by the Wildenstein family, which pays her a tax-free $560,000 a year.

Claude Dumont-Beghi, her lawyer, has visited museums from New York to Tokyo to identify paintings owned by the family. He discovered that Wildenstein paintings labelled "from a private collection" included The Lute Player by Caravaggio.

"I trawled through exhibition catalogues and the internet," Mr Dumont-Beghi said. "I wrote to all the biggest museums and some of them phoned me. They said they couldn't put it in writing, but they told me what to go for."

Much of the fortune was held by trusts in Guernsey, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.

"When he died, they had an obligation to tell Sylvia that she was a beneficiary and to distribute the assets. But they didn't do it," Mr Dumont-Beghi said.

Alec Wildenstein died in 2008. Guy Wildenstein's lawyer declined to comment, but his representatives have argued that as his father had created trusts and named the beneficiaries, he no longer owned anything.

Sylvia has been seriously ill but said there was plenty of fight left in her: "My parents had a fighting spirit and I was a fighter in the army."

The Sunday Times