The antiquities trafficking expenses towards the previous president of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, and curator Jean-François Charnier, have been upheld by a chamber of the Paris court docket of enchantment. The choice got here as a shock, as the overall prosecutor had requested to cancel their indictments, contemplating that the investigations have proven “no critical or constant suspicions” towards the 2 males. Such an consequence may be very uncommon, because it represents a critical blow to the investigating decide.
The appellate judges introduced their choice on 3 February, however solely made their causes public six days later. They take into account that every one the foundations have been revered by the investigators of the central workplace towards artwork trafficking, together with when the curators had been saved in custody for a number of days to be interviewed. They insist that they had been each “carefully tied” to the method of acquisitions of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which had been concluded “regardless of difficulties concerning the origins” of some Egyptian antiquities. Martinez was charged for “complicity“ and Charnier for “having facilitated” the acquisitions.
Based on the newly launched court docket doc, the French sellers who bought these things, Christophe Kunicki and Richard Semper—charged in 2020 with fraud and cash laundering—confessed that, in some circumstances, they’d solid paperwork so as to “fill the gaps“ of the provenances. However Martinez and Charnier have identified that the primary doubts about works acquired through Kunicki and Semper had been raised in 2019, years after the acquisitions, when it appeared that they had been additionally the sellers of a golden sarcophagus that the Metropolitan Museum needed to return to Egypt.
The 40-page ruling of the French chamber summarises the investigation’s incriminating experiences, however Charnier’s lawyer, Corinne Hershkovitch, says she “regrets that the magistrates have relied on these experiences with out having totally checked the exculpatory testimonies and items of proof”. She maintains that the investigation made the error of “placing on the identical stage the traffickers and the curators, who had been their victims”.
The chamber additionally refused to drop the proof towards the German Lebanese seller Roben Dib offered by the pinnacle of the antiquities trafficking unit of the Manhattan District Lawyer Workplace, Matthew Bogdanos. Dib’s lawyer, Sébastien Schapira, says these items of proof weren’t transmitted underneath the 1998 treaty between the US and France on mutual help on felony issues, and will due to this fact be annulled. However the chamber says that the communication of the recordsdata was coated by magistrates in Paris and New York and “it’s a necessity for investigators to speak freely in such a widespread worldwide investigation, which sprawled to the Center East and Europe, together with Germany, Switzerland, the Emirates and Qatar”.
Martinez and Charnier each stated they plan to enchantment to France’s Excessive Courtroom.
