Law, crime and regulation

UK: BY the time you read this, the Kent and Medway Bills should have passed into law, with Royal Assent being given on Tuesday, April 10, although there will be a six-month delay until it can be enforced.

UK: DOUBTS over the authenticity of several paintings, including a ‘Picasso’, led to the cancellation of a whole sale last week.

TWO men have been charged in the United States in a conspiracy to sell the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleu, signed by Napoleon and stolen in 1988 from the French National Archives in Paris.

UK: CONFUSION reigned this week as to exactly what measures will be introduced with the adoption of the Kent County Council and Medway Council Bills.

UK: THE net surrounding the UK’s illicit art and antiquities trade has tightened with the Government signing up to an international convention to return stolen artefacts to their rightful owners.

UK: A ‘LOST’ drawing by Michelangelo could be saved for the nation if a £7.5m appeal, launched this week, succeeds.

UK: THE net surrounding the UK’s illicit art and antiquities trade has tightened with the Government signing up to an international convention to return stolen artefacts to their rightful owners.

UK: CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown’s change in VAT policy for museums should safeguard free entry where it already exists.

INVALUABLE have secured a £1m injection of capital from an ethical investment fund to help develop their stolen database services further.

FRANCE: Three French museums have become embroiled in legal controversy after harbouring works of art looted from their original owners during the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War.

US: A LONG-running legal dispute has been sorted out in the United States. Unusually for such a contest I understand that everybody is happy.

FRANCE: A Paris court has refused the request of Christie’s owner François Pinault to revoke the sale of a statue of Pharaoh Sesostris III on the grounds that it was not authentic.

US: THE THREE year investigation into the price-fixing conspiracy between Sotheby’s and Christie’s entered its closing stages at a federal court in Manhattan last week as a federal judge formally accepted the criminal guilt of both auctioneers and no legal objections were raised to the terms of the $512m settlement in the civil lawsuit.

Commission fixing charges may be brought against Christie’s and Sotheby’s in Britain following the dismissal of three lawsuits in America that sought compensation for purchases in London since 1992.

A LAWSUIT that threatened to deal a fatal blow to the heart of EBay’s trading status has been dismissed by a Californian court

UK: ARTS Minister Alan Howarth has announced that the Government will pay £125,000 compensation to a family forced to sell a painting as they fled the Nazis.

HOPES of clarifying ownership rights over items sold at auction on the Internet have suffered a setback with the settling out of court of a potentially precedent-setting case.

YAHOO have decided to ban sales of Nazi memorabilia and other items promoting racism from their Website from January 10.

UK: THE Export Review Committee, which assesses whether outstanding works of art should be allowed to leave the country, has helped six such pieces stay in Britain in the past year.

UK: Major new initiatives, including the introduction of a new criminal offence, are expected to come into force in the next few years to tackle illicit trade in cultural property.