Damage of several hundred thousand euros. Galleries but also French and foreign collectors cheated. “Large-scale trafficking” in fake works of contemporary art has just been revealed in the Alpes-Maritimes department, announced the Nice public prosecutor.
Six people, some of whom have already been convicted of similar crimes, were taken into custody this week. And four of them are referred this Friday as part of an opening of judicial investigations into the counts of “organized gang fraud”, “aggravated money laundering”, “criminal conspiracy”, “organized gang counterfeiting”, “forgery and use of forgery” and “concealed work”, specifies Damien Martinelli. The prosecution requested their placement in pre-trial detention.
Two art galleries targeted
A preliminary investigation opened in December 2022 made it possible to confirm the existence of trafficking launched in 2019. The sleuths of the Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property (OCTBC) and the research section of Fréjus (Var ) focused their attention on two art galleries located in Nice and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, “having a storefront while having no legal existence”, explains the prosecutor.
Searches, organized between the Alpes-Maritimes and the city of Lille (North), led to the seizure of five vehicles, a boat, five luxury watches and 90,000 euros in cash, for a total amount of 450,000 euros. of criminal assets.
According to the Nice public prosecutor’s office, the various defendants face a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment for this type of offense.