Art Tycoon’s Tax-Fraud Accuser Is Punished for $5 Million Stash

Lawyer Claude Dumont-Beghi gained celebrity in France for helping to expose opaque offshore structures used by the Wildenstein family to stash away artworks worth more than €1 billion.

But following a previously unreported ruling last month, she also faces a multimillion-euro tax bill, after being caught hiding her own funds abroad.

Claude Dumont-Beghi in 2011.

Photographer: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

As well as pursuing a case against Guy Wildenstein — the art dealer dynasty’s fifth-generation patriarch — French tax watchdogs did some digging into Dumont-Beghi. They found out about a €4.5 million ($5 million) hoard, in an undeclared New York HSBC Holdings Plc account held via a set ...