Nina Ricci heir sentenced for tax evasion

Inheritance parked in Switzerland for 20 years

A Parisian judge says Arlette Ricci has been “extremely persistent for more than 20 years” in her attempt to keep 18.7 million euro of her father’s allowance hidden on a Swiss bank account, safely out of view of the French treasury. Her attempts to use different fiscal schemes to organize her own insolvency also greatly displeased the court.

On top of the three-year sentence and the million dollar fine, the court has seized a Parisian mansion and an estate on Corsica, valued (according to the French media) at some 4 million euro. Margot Vignat, Arlette Ricci’s 51-year old daughter, has also been sentenced for tax evasion and has been given a 8-month suspended sentence.

Will probably appeal

Arlette Ricci is the first famous person sentenced based on the infamous SwissLeaks file containing leaked information from the Swiss HSBC bank. The heir was not present at the hearing, but has denied all charges and has maintained her actions were all legal. She feels she is being used as a deterrent, which is why she and her lawyers are considering appealing the decision.

Arlette Ricci is the granddaughter of Maria Nielli, who launched the Nina Ricci fashion house in Paris, back in 1932. She stopped designing in the fifties and passed the reins to her son Robert, who launched the company’s perfume branch in 1941 and was the man behind the mythical L’Air Du Temps perfume (1948). His daughter, Arlette, inherited his wealth when he died in 1988.