Wife blowtorches divorce
THE divorce of Swiss tycoon Maurice Alain
Amon and his New York socialite wife — who was accused of ruining millions of dollars worth of his $25 million art collection with a blowtorch — has taken another bizarre turn as her attorney says that he has brought allegations that Amon committed tax fraud with his modern masterpieces.
Amon, the 64-year-old multimillionaire heir to a Swiss printing company, accused his estranged wife, Tracey Hejailan-Amon, in February of taking a blowtorch to a safe in their $7 million Paris apartment after losing her own key, damaging or destroying art that included a Richard Prince, an Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst’s “Acridine.”
As the pair continues with a contentious di- vorce, which began with Amon filing in 2015 after eight years of marriage, Tracey’s attorney Mark
Jay Heller told Page Six in a statement that he passed information to the New York district attorney and the attorney general’s office alleging that Amon “fraudulently evaded taxes in New York State in the purchase of [approximately] $25 million dollars of art bought in New York, by utilizing invoices that gave the impression that the art was being shipped out of the state as to avoid New York taxation, when, in fact, the art was installed in the $10 million Fifth Avenue co-op owned by his wife.” Heller added, “Then he surreptitiously spirited said art out of her apartment without her knowledge or consent while she was in Paris [her civil case alleging that he took her art was dismissed] in conjunction with his filing a divorce action unbeknown to her in Monaco [where they also have a home] after he allegedly ran off with a decades-younger stewardess who served drinks on the couple’s private jet.”
But Amon’s lawyer Peter Bronstein countered, “I have no knowledge of a criminal investigation of Mr. Amon. There is no criminal investigation of Mr Amon — that is slanderous. There have been two civil actions filed by his estranged wife in New York, which have both been dismissed. Mrs. Amon is batting .000, as we would say in baseball. These claims trying to besmirch Mr. Amon’s reputation are untrue and unfair.”