Tracey Amon subpoena was filed on July 25 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking to compel art advisor Sanford “Sandy” Heller to produce documents for use in Swiss litigation over the estate of her late husband, Maurice Alain Amon. Heller began advising Maurice in 2013 and is widely regarded as a major figure in the art advisory field, with clients said to include Roman Abramovich and Steve Cohen.
Maurice, an heir to SIPCA, which manufactures inks used in banknote printing, died in 2019 at age 68 while vacationing in Saint-Tropez. Court papers estimate his wealth at about $600 million at the time of his death. According to the filing, Tracey is pursuing her share of the estate and the request centers on Heller’s valuation of the art collection.
Tracey Amon subpoena targets valuation details
The couple married in Hong Kong in 2008 without a marriage contract, an exhibit states. The filing says Maurice initiated divorce proceedings abroad in 2015 without informing her and secretly removed roughly 20 artworks, valued collectively at $25 million, from their New York residence, as well as works from other homes.
In 2017 court papers, he alleged that after losing her key, Tracey used a blowtorch to open a lockbox in their Paris home, leaving toxic dust on works by artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol.
While the divorce was pending, he allegedly executed a will naming his son from a prior marriage, Albert Amon, as sole heir, and his assistant, Silvio Venturi, as executor. A 2018 ruling reported at the time awarded Tracey about $123,000 per month in spousal support and a lump sum of about $1.3 million in Monaco.
The filing says Maurice later added other legatees and beneficiaries in a 2019 codicil signed in Singapore. Tracey sued Albert and Venturi in Switzerland in 2020, and they also filed an action against her.
In December 2024, the Justice of the Peace in Lausanne ordered administration of the estate. In December 2025, administrator Olivier Weniger issued an inventory along with an assessment from KPMG evaluating, as of 2019, the holdings of Artmon, the British Virgin Islands company through which Maurice owned his artworks.
The filing states that Artmon’s art values appeared to fall sharply in 2019 and that the decline seemed to rely in part on Heller’s valuation. According to the document, Heller reported capital losses of €33.4 million and latent capital gains of €7.5 million, resulting in a net loss of about €26 million, or $29.6 million.
The filing argues there is no list of the works Heller examined, no methodology, and no indication of when the evaluation occurred.
Heller did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tracey seeks the full valuation report and all related work product, including the artworks reviewed, comparables, valuation methods, and correspondence. She is also asking for records of Heller’s dealings with Artmon and the Maurice Amon estate, such as sales, purchases, consignments, inventories, and invoices.
The court has not yet acted on the request.