Law, crime and regulation

PARIS auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been given an eight-month suspended jail sentence, and fined €100,000, after a Paris court found him guilty of fraud.

FAMILIES with valuable homes and art collections may face extreme hardship and even bankruptcy after the Chancellor tore up the rule book on inheritance in the Budget.

ORGANISERS Brian and Anna Haughton have cancelled this summer’s London Asian Art Fair citing trade uncertainties over The Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act as the reason.

POLICE are warning that a thief, fitting the description of a woman who stole from London antiques shops in January, has struck again.

VENDORS wishing to protect their interests when an auction house becomes insolvent should use firms where at least one of the partners or directors is a member of the RICS.

THE British Antique Dealers’ Association believe campaigners are wrong to call for only independent registered experts to be allowed to date ivory objects. The move would drive trade underground they say.

INITIAL arguments in the £1.75m High Court dispute between Christie’s and Taylor Lynne Thomson over a pair of porphyry urns indicate that both parties intend to fight their corner vigorously.

CAMPAIGNERS against the illegal trade in ivory want to end the exisiting policy which allows any antique dealer to appraise the age of ivory in works of art.

TAXES lost to the US government during the American side of the Sotheby’s/Christie’s price-fixing settlement can be retrieved by the British trade say the US company trading in auction house class action certificates.

The antiques trade are being alerted to a new online fraud after at least three dealers were targeted last week. Overpayment fraud, as it is known, is the latest in a series of Internet-based payment frauds aimed at retailers with a website presence.

New laws to benefit the disabled due to come into force later this year will have implications for antique shops, centres and auction houses. The Disability Discrimination Act, covering all shops and service providers, irrespective of size, requires companies and venue managers to improve access and facilities for wheelchair users from October 1.

TRANSPORT for London have begun the first stage of a public consultation on the proposal to effectively double the area of coverage of the London congestion charging system. The proposal suggests extending the current zone westwards from Park Lane to include most of Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster where many of the city’s art and antique dealers are based.

Five early 18th century ivory relief portraits by celebrated carver David Le Marchand stolen from the Art Gallery of Ontario on January 17 have been recovered.

A MASKED gang took a substantial quantity of antique jewellery during a robbery at the Petersfield Antiques Fair held at the Festival Hall in the town from February 6-8.

THE new money laundering regulations come into force next month, creating new legal requirements for auctioneers and dealers who wish to accept large cash payments from their clients.

New company threatens duped dealers: The many victims of the misleading fair guides that landed dealers and auctioneers with bills for hundreds of pounds are being contacted again by an aggressive overseas debt collection company.

Paris auctioneer Jean-Claude Binoche has been charged with fraud in connection with the sale of three pictures in 1995. Binoche, 61, is accused of buying two works himself at an auction he staged on 18 October 1995, which is illegal under French law, and of selling another work after the sale (a Prud’hon drawing, to the Beaux-Arts museum in Dijon). After-sales were illegal in France at the time, although they have been permitted since 2001.

VENDORS of classic cars in a December sale held by Coys of Kensington (Sales) Limited face losing at least three quarters of their settlement as the firm ceased trading.

UK: The BADA have issued a description of a woman, operating under a number of names, thought to be responsible for a number of thefts at antiques shops in London. Last week, dealers in Kensington Church Street and in the Fulham Road were taken in by the woman, whose approach was most unusual.

Measures would not restrict art trade: BRITAIN may soon enjoy one of the most enlightened schemes for keeping key works of art in the country, thanks to the Goodison Review, which has just been published.