Scandal-Plagued Wildenstein Mansion Back on Market for $100 Million

In 2014, the Wildensteins thought they’d pulled off the biggest real estate coup in New York. The billionaire art dealing family, whose gallery, Wildenstein & Co. had owned its 21,000-square-foot townhouse on East 64th Street for more than 80 years, signed a deal with the government of Qatar to sell the limestone-clad building for a reported $90 million. Qatar planned to use the building as a consulate, and the Wildensteins, embroiled in a half-billion dollar tax case in France, would get a healthy injection of liquidity.

But Qatar pulled out just one day before the closing date, claiming that Guy Wildenstein, the de facto family patriarch, had violated money laundering laws. In a subsequent suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the Wildensteins countered that Qatar was reneging on the deal because of uncomfortable publicity surrounding what was then a record-breaking sale.