Yves Bouvier is accused of tax evasion in Switzerland © Hpetit21/Creative Commons
The Genevan art dealer Yves Bouvier allegedly owes CHF330m (£276m) in unpaid Swiss taxes on profits made through selling around CHF2bn (£1.7bn) of art to the Russian collector Dimitry Rybolovlev, according to documents unsealed yesterday by Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court.
The documents were seized from Bouvier's lawyers in 2017. He and his lawyers, Anna Pivin and Pierre-Alain Guillaume of Walder Wyss, have argued they should be kept sealed due to attorney-client confidentiality, but yesterday the Federal Criminal Court ruled against them, report the Swiss newspapers Le Temps, 24 Heures and Tribune de Genève.
The calculations were made by the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (AFC), which started an investigation into Bouvier and two offshore companies he owned in March 2017, suspecting the art dealer of not having declared all of his income between 2007 and 2015. At the start of its investigation in 2017, the AFC estimated Bouvier owed CHF165m (£138) in unpaid taxes in Switzerland—that number has now doubled.
The dispute hinges on whether the sales were made in Switzerland or Singapore, where Bouvier says he moved in 2009 and is therefore not required to pay Swiss tax. The AFC, however, claims that his Singapore domicile is fictitious and the deals were made from Geneva. Yesterday's ruling relates purely to thRead More – Source
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