Heiress Arlette Ricci faces jail for money-laundering

The heiress of the fashion and perfume house Nina Ricci was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay heavy fines and back taxes for having hidden millions of euro in HSBC bank accounts in Switzerland.

The ruling was the first involving a famous name in the so-called Swissleaks scandal, in which a former HSBC employee gave authorities thousands of names of suspected tax evaders. Other trials are expected to follow.

A Paris court convicted Arlette Ricci, 73, granddaughter of designer Nina Ricci, of tax evasion and money laundering and sentenced her to three years in prison, with two years suspended. The court ordered a €1m fine and the confiscation of two properties worth €4m.

Ricci is deciding whether to appeal, and her lawyer says she may instead ask a judge to let her serve the prison term under less strict conditions, such as partial liberty or wearing an electronic bracelet.

In a separate part of the case, the court ordered Ricci, a lawyer and two companies to pay millions in back taxes for the period of 2007-2009. Arlette Ricci’s daughter, Margot Vignat, 51, was also convicted and given an eight-month suspended sentence. Vignat and Ricci were also ordered to pay €100,000 damages to the French government.

Ricci was one of thousands of suspected tax evaders on the original list of accounts leaked to French tax authorities in 2008 by former employee Herve Falciani.

Last week, French authorities placed London-based HSBC under investigation over alleged tax fraud by its Swiss private bank. The bank said the claim were “without legal basis.”