None of those companies is accused of any wrongdoing in connection with tax charges against Zukerman. Zukerman is not accused of any wrongdoing during his time at Morgan Stanley.

Court filings show that the indictment was first filed under seal on May 11.

Unreported Gains

Securities filings show that in 2008, Zukerman’s company sold for $267 million a firm it owned with ConocoPhillips called Penreco, a maker of specialty solvents and refined petroleum products.

Although the indictment doesn’t name Penreco, it alleges that that same year, Zukerman’s firm sold a company at about that price and failed to report a gain that would have generated about $31 million in income taxes. The indictment alleges Zukerman told his accountants that he had previously transferred the investment to a family trust and that his firm’s parent company was not liable for capital gains taxes.

To bolster this claim, he created backdated and phony documents, which he showed to his tax accountants, who were not handling the taxes for the family trust. The indictment alleges the trust failed to file tax returns for the year when the sale took place.

Zukerman was audited by the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 in connection with the transaction but provided false information to his accountants and lawyers in connection with the audit, the indictment says. Zukerman divided his accounting and tax preparation work for his various personal and business interests so that no one had a full picture of his dealings, it says.

Soon after that windfall -- which netted Zukerman’s entities $110 million -- the indictment alleges he transferred the funds to another company, which spent $52 million to purchase 73 paintings. Although prosecutors don’t describe the specific works, Zukerman and his wife own a variety of Dutch paintings, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website, including works by Van Vliet. On the NY Social Diary website, the museum’s late curator of European paintings described him as “a friend of my department with a capital F.”

Sales Taxes

Prosecutors allege that Zukerman engaged in a complex scheme to avoid paying New York State sales and use taxes on the purchase of those paintings.