“Everything was wrong, but the money”: Chair in Versaille's chair scandal await the conviction

It has been almost a decade since the Paris antique dealer Bill Pallot amazed the art world by stating a number of royal chairs. After the case, submitted in 2016, 11 chairs and armchairs, which were commissioned by relatives of Louis XV and Louis XVI, were linked for a total of 3.7 million euros by Paris Galleries and Sotheby's to the Château of Versailles, including private collectors, including Prince Hamad, Al Thani of Qatar and in the Hermès family. The following examination discovered enormous profits, offshore companies in Panama, Swiss bank accounts, hidden sums in cash and forged provenance and illuminated the dark face of the antique furniture market.

In March, Pallot, who was an expert at the Didier Aaron Gallery, was, together with a carpenter and restorer Bruno Desnoues, who admitted to fabric the counterfeits. The prosecutor asked for three years in prison, including a two -year suspension for Pallot, and two years with a one -year prison sentence for Desnoues. Both could be banished from their trade for five years. Your judgments are expected on June 11th.

If Pontoise's Court of Justice follows the submissions near Versailles, none of the accused who spent five months in custody before the proceedings would return to prison. The prosecutor asked for serious fines: € 300,000 for Pallot and € 100,000 for Desnoues as well as the seizure of € 200,000 in cash in his bank security. The pallot also risks the confiscation of his Parisian apartment in Avenue Marceau worth more than EUR 1.5 million. He had to sell around 900 objects from his eclectic collection at an auction to cover a fiscal adaptation of € 1.8 million.

But the heaviest fine – € 700,000 – was requested for the renowned Kraemer gallery, which sold four of the fake seats. In one case, the gallery sold a few chairs to Prince Al Thani for € 2 million, which it had bought for € 200,000. The collector was refunded. Allegedly commissioned by Queen Marie Antoinette, the couple had been classified by the French state as a “national treasure” at the request of the Château de Versailles, who had considered buying them. The prosecutor asked for a one -year prison sentence against Laurent Kraemer for “negligence” in his specialist knowledge and the creation of false provenance.

Kraemer, who is also charged in another process for a number of allegedly fake Louis XIV furniture, said he was convinced that the seats sold by his company were real. “He is a victim of fraud, no accomplice,” said his lawyer Martin Reynaud and insisted that he had never had direct contact with the in front that hid behind a middleman, Guillaume Dillée. This expert, a close friend of Pallot, fled to Australia and was neither called in court, nor was Sotheby's expert Patrick Leperlier.

The fraud was discovered when a delivery driver was arrested after his investment of more than 1 million euros in France and Portugal was reported by the authorities. He confessed to act as a middleman for Desnoues, who, when he urged to explain his hidden income, confessed the falsification.

Pallot was the world's leading specialist for royal seats and responsible for ancient furniture in the Didier Aaron gallery. He was a respected professor at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne and a scholar who questioned the curators whether they had doubts about a royal armchair. “I was the head and Desnoues were my hands,” he told the court. Desnoues was the main restorer of Versailles Furniture and was even invited to make a copy of Louis Xvis bed for the royal apartment.

Pallot informed the court that his fraud began in 2007 as a “joke” to see a challenge to see if they could cheat on the best experts. “It ran like child's play,” he said, adding: “Everything was wrong, but the money.” Since the seats were mainly sold through his middleman, he claimed that he personally was never intended to cheat the Palace of Versailles. Corinne Hershkovitch, the lawyer of Versailles, accused him of “capturing the Château by making seats that were missing in the royal apartments”. She tells The art line: “There was no way that the curators could guess such diabolical counterfeits that were made by these brilliant experts who were at the top of their trade.”