Law, crime and regulation

A London dealer has welcomed a new wide-ranging bill aimed at amending the law passed in the US last year banning the commercial trade in elephant ivory.

Opposition to controversial new laws governing cultural heritage in Germany is gathering pace. Auctioneers, dealers and collectors are backing a petition ‘preserving the right to privately collect’ and calling for German the government to rethink its proposals.

An art dealer from Cornwall has been sentenced after pleading guilty to seven counts of fraud relating to the sale of fake paintings, including works he claimed were by Alfred Wallis (1855-1942).

The George Cross medal group awarded to Second World War heroine Violette Szabό has sold for £260,000 at London auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb.

It was included in one of the Ashmolean Museum’s greatest bequests but this magnificent salt cellar was subsequently discovered to be Nazi loot. Recently restituted, it soared to £850,000 at auction.

The Hôtel Drouot, the communal saleroom facility used by most Paris auctioneers, has welcomed the news that swathes of former staff members are to face charges relating to stolen property.

A stolen Auguste Rodin sculpture, recovered after it was consigned to Christie’s in 2011, will go to auction later this year.

Mayfair art agent Timothy Sammons is facing a string of legal claims over soured multi-million-pound deals in the United Kingdom and the United States involving paintings by Van Gogh, Canaletto, Picasso, Chagall, Modigliani and Magritte.

Six paintings consigned to Gorringes of Lewes, East Sussex, have been returned to the Amsterdam Museum after being identified as those stolen from the Dutch institution over 40 years ago.

A leading CITES lawyer has criticised DEFRA’s “wholesale failure” to alert the public to law changes, after a court fined a jeweller £2000 for selling antique tiger claw pendants.

A group of restituted paintings were among the highlights of a robust series of Impressionist and Modern art auctions in London.

Art dealer David Carter has admitted intentionally selling fake paintings purporting to be by well-known Cornish artists. He has pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud at Truro crown court and may face jail.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s have well-established specialist departments for brokering deals on sale of Nazi-looted works returned to rightful heirs. Over the last decade some major pieces of Impressionist and Modern art have come to auction as a result of restitution settlements.

“The ivory ban has been a right old dampener on the market as a whole but after taking time to consider its implications, collectors are coming back.”

Online sellers who use eBay are the focus of fresh attempts by HM Revenue & Customs to crack down on tax evasion.

The US Court of Appeals has ruled that the California Resale Royalty Act (CRRA) can stand but apply only to sales made within the state and not to those made out-of-state by California residents.

The third annual ‘Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Symposium’ will be held in New York on June 4-6.

More than 60 artefacts stolen from English and Welsh country churches over the past few years have been recovered by police after they were alerted by a collector.

Eight men have been charged in connection with the Hatton Garden heist following 12 coordinated raids across London and Kent by officers from Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad.