Billionaire founder of wine giant appeals US$411m Swiss tax bill

PIERRE Castel, co-founder of one of the world’s largest wine traders, is appealing against an order to pay hundreds of millions in Swiss back-taxes, his lawyer said Thursday (Oct 13).

A Swiss court issued the penalty, saying the 95-year-old French billionaire behind the Castel Group global drinks empire had fudged his tax returns.

The Geneva court ruling, issued on Jul 5 and seen by AFP this week, found that he had managed to conceal significant parts of his fortune. It ordered him to pay 410 million Swiss francs (US$411 million) in back taxes.

Castel’s lawyer Gregory Clerc said that an appeal had been filed with Switzerland’s highest court.

Castel left France for Switzerland back in 1981, when leftist Francois Mitterrand won the presidency. He slipped under the radar of the tax authorities as he registered under his given name Jesus instead of the widely recognisable Pierre, the Swiss investigative blog Gotham City reported.

While continuing to rake in profits from the group behind France’s omnipresent Nicolas chain of wine stores, this move “allowed him to evade the attention of tax authorities for 30 years”, the blog reported.

But his lawyer Clerc argued: “Mr Castel completed all the administrative formalities without exception by indicating his full name, including his birth names, as soon as he arrived in Switzerland. He never used a pseudonym or other identity.”

Castel had called himself Pierre since he was “very, very young”, to avoid the stigma of a Spanish name back when “it was frowned upon ... to be the son of an immigrant”.

The appeals court ruling said the tax authorities had become suspicious after discovering that his declared fortune was far smaller than that attributed to him in the media.

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Swiss magazine Bilan listed him as the 11th-richest person in Switzerland; French business weekly Challenges said he had the 10th-largest fortune in France, valued at an estimated €13.5 billion (S$18.8 billion).

The Geneva judgement highlighted the complex structure of Castel’s fortune, split between holdings in Gibraltar, a foundation in Liechtenstein and a trust in Singapore.

Castel had argued this was to ensure the independence and durability of the group, and to avoid conflicts within the family.

While acknowledging that he had “omitted to declare some revenue elements”, his lawyers argued that this was in part due to his “old school” approach to business, which he conducted through oral agreements and handshakes. AFP