It seemed the simplest of scams. Art dealer Ely Sakhai, owner of a respectable New York gallery, purchased paintings at auction, concentrating on the impressionists and post-impressionists. He then had forgers copy the works by artists such as Renoir, Gauguin and Chagall.
The copies were sold as originals to buyers in the far east before Sakhai disposed of the originals at auction. It was a lucrative arrangement for the dealer, netting him an estimated $3,5-million.
But the 52-year-old Iranian-born dealer’s scheme came unstuck when both the original and a forgery of the same painting came to auction at the same time.
This week he pleaded guilty to the fraud and agreed to pay $12,5-million in restitution and to forfeit 11 paintings. He also faces up to five years in prison.
”He has decided to resolve his difficulties with the government and get this behind him,” Sakhai’s lawyer, Frederick Hafetz, said. Sakhai, who will be sentenced in July along with his office manager, could have faced up to 20 years in prison.
The fraud spanned 15 years and involved works by artists including Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Klee and Paul Gauguin. Sakhai is thought to have perpetrated the fraud with 25 paintings.
Two dealers confronted him after he sold them an alleged forgery of Monet’s Le Mont Kolsas. As compensation he offered them nine paintings by artists including Renoir and Cézanne. These were also fakes, it is alleged. Sakhai then offered a genuine Chagall — Le Roi David dans le Paysage Vert, having allegedly sold the forgery to a dealer in Taiwan.
But Gauguin’s Vase de Fleurs proved Sakhai’s undoing. The dealer bought the painting in the 1990s and had a copy made, according to court documents. He sold the copy, using the original documentation as proof of its provenance, waited a few years, then sold the original.
But in 2000, both the original and the copy came up for auction at the same time: the fake at Christie’s in New York and the original, offered by Sakhai, at Sotheby’s. Christie’s withdrew the fake from sale, but Sotheby’s continued with the sale of the original on behalf of Sakhai. It fetched £169 000.
Although Sakhai closed his Manhattan gallery following his arrest, he has since opened a new gallery in Long Island, offering a range of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings for sale. – Guardian Unlimited Â