Law, crime and regulation

DESPITE warning after warning – the latest on the front page of last week’s Antiques Trade Gazette – dealers are still falling foul of Fairguide, the Vienna-based firm who have been misleading the trade into ordering unwanted advertising for years.

EC fine Sotheby’s £13m – Christie’s escape penalty: THE US courts have given the go-ahead for compensation settlements to be paid in Sotheby’s and Christie’s $512m price fixing case. The green light came last week after the 90-day appeal period set by the US Supreme Court expired with no challenge to the ruling.

UK: A man who stole two extremely rare atlases to remove maps and sell them individually over the Internet has been jailed for 15 months.

Thieves plagued West Country churches over the summer, stealing monumental brasses and, in one case, a misericord. Experts suspect the thefts are the work of one gang, targeting villages close to the M4 and M40. It is thought the thief must have at least one accomplice to act as lookout as several of the churches are popular with summer visitors.

UK: A man calling himself Terence Lucas has disappeared without paying for antiques hired in antique centres to use as props in a film. Mr Lucas, who is described as white, around 40-45, 6ft tall, slim and with very short grey hair, visited three dealers in Antiquarius on the Kings Road, London on October 2, claiming to work for a company called Fine Art Research.

WITH the backing of 65 per cent of a PayPal shareholders vote, eBay have completed their acquisition of the leading online payments company. Despite the overwhelming approval of the merger, some shareholders did object to it, suing eBay and PayPal in an attempt to block the acquisition.

A set of paintings, including two by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens, have been stolen from a country house in Ireland that has now been targeted four times by thieves, police said.

COMPLEX bureaucracy and form filling are the biggest threat to small business – the backbone of the European art market – says Anthony Browne, chairman of the British Art Market Federation.

FRENCH auction laws may have been reformed, but monopolies still exist, as Christie’s have just found to their cost.

THE chances of China allowing private trading in cultural objects have increased with the third round of debates on amending the law.

PAYPAL, the leading online payment service, are facing a new challenge that could scupper eBay’s attempt to take them over.

PARIS: The knock-on effects of auction reform mean it’s all change for the new season: France’s traditional auction scene has undergone a major overhaul, with commissaires-priseurs retaining their monopoly for court-order sales only, and obliged to create new commercial entities if they wish to stage other auctions.

Auctioneers and dealers are asked to be on their guard against a man of Middle-Eastern origin signing cheques in the name of David Gedaneean on a closed account from Royal Bank of Scotland.

DEALERS across the country need to beware of a new campaign to con the trade into paying unnecessary fees for registering under the Data Protection Act.

A second hand bookshop in Glasgow and two dealers are locked in a legal dispute over the ownership of a lost cache of William Blake watercolours, valued at over £1m.

THE State of Illinois is on the verge of introducing a new law to tackle Internet fraud that could lead the way for legislation elsewhere in the US and across the world.

ANTIQUES fairs currently allowed to operate without planning permission may continue to do so after the Government announced that there would be no change in the law after all.

CREDIT card fraud is steeply on the increase, but dealers are finding that it is them and not the banks who are taking all the risk.

The Antiquarian Book Dealers Association have sent out a warning to dealers to be alert to a credit card scam that has already claimed more than $100,000 worth of items from the trade.

ANTHONY Molloy worked as a wildlife ranger for Ireland’s national heritage service, Duchas. When he retired a few years ago, at 65, his farewell gift was not the traditional watch, but a metal detector.