Law, crime and regulation

The Reserve Bank of Australia are to challenge eBay on their decision to make PayPal mandatory on all sales listings. The RBA says it will “shortly be holding discussions with PayPal [an eBay subsidiary] with a view to seeking the removal of these rules”.

Tiffany & Co have appealed over the ruling that eBay do not have to police their auction site for fakes before they are sold to unwitting buyers.

The FBI are attempting to track down the rightful owners of 137 works of art, discovered in a New York apartment, which are thought to have been stolen in the 1960s and 70s.

Stolen art and antiques valued at tens of millions of pounds remain at large despite the incarceration of five members of the notorious Johnson family who bragged in a 2005 BBC documentary that they would gladly steal from “the lords, the sirs and the ladies”.

An unidentified culprit used counterfeit cash to purchase an item in an auction of general antiques at Peter Francis Auctioneers of West Wales on July 15.

A YORKSHIRE dealer lost a lifetime's collection in one night when thieves stole the bulk of his Clarice Cliff stock built up over the last 25 years. Art Deco dealer Muir Hewitt lost around 55 pieces of Clarice Cliff when the thieves targeted his shop in the Redbrick Mill in Batley in the early hours of July 26.

Ebay have won a landmark judgment in the US federal courts, which effectively protects their position as an independent trading platform.

THE controversial Treasury-led proposals to radically increase CITES licence charges will not come into effect until next year at the earliest. In some cases CITES permits, required for the export outside the European Union of antiques incorporating ivory and other elements of endangered species, are to rise from £7 for each permit (among the lowest in Europe) to as much as £59 (the highest).

ANTIQUES shops in the West End of London are being warned to watch out for a man who has been stealing valuable works of art using cloned credit cards.

The Government confirmed last week that it is not currently in favour of extending the artists’ resale rights scheme from 2010 to include the heirs of artists.

EBAY Australia have decided to drop the case for PayPal exclusivity ahead of a decision on the matter fro the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

A FRENCH company has launched a new online stolen art database which allows victims of theft to offer rewards directly.

EBAY have vowed to fight a new French court ruling that effectively makes them responsible for what is sold on their site. In effect, the ruling could mean them having to vet items before they are offered, rather than removing offending objects once they have been alerted to them.

A DEALER had £50,000 of jewellery stolen when his car was broken into after he returned from a fair in Birmingham. Thieves used the same modus operandi employed in previous thefts at Coinex and in Hatton Garden.

AUCTIONEERS at the latest Society of Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers (SOFAA) seminar were visibly shocked as they learnt how easy it is to become an unwitting party to a bribe.

EBAY’S latest bid to tackle fraud – by insisting UK sellers accept payment via PayPal – has come under attack. Due to come into force on July 9, the online giant says it will help block fraudulent transactions and data theft.

A Kent dealer has received a two-year suspended sentence following a three-year international operation into ivory and whale-tooth smuggling. The case is the latest under Operation Charm, an ongoing campaign against the illegal trade in endangered species in London.

LEGISLATION that risks blighting the trade in a large number of cultural objects could soon be amended thanks to common ground between the art market and the Ministry of Defence.

A Chelsea antiques dealer has been badly injured after taking on an armed gang who smashed up his premises. Ian Towning, the owner of the Bourbon-Hanby Antique Centre, was subjected to months of intimidation, before he fought back when three men wielding sledgehammers and carrying a gun robbed the centre in Sydney Street, London SW3 on the afternoon of Monday June 9.

Sotheby’s New York and Christie's King Street both withdrew furniture lots provenanced to dealers John and Carlton Hobbs from sale last week – casualties of the unfolding "fake" furniture scandal first exposed by The Sunday Times.