The Times Magazine's exposé of the
Art Loss Register's 'Serbian Strategy' (08.08.2014)It is perfectly understandable that victims of art theft will want to be reunited with their possessions. Law enforcement agencies and experienced former FBI and Scotland Yard art detectives devote much of their time to that very endeavour,occasionally having to interact with darker elements in the realm of organised crime in order to conclude so.
[br]It has long been an article of understanding in the art world that while monies occasionally need to change hands in order to access information that might lead to the recovery of stolen works of art, the thieves themselves must not be paid. To conclude so is effectively to encourage more art crime.
So, or what of the Art Loss Register’s fee-chasing involvement in these activities?
London-based The Times Magazine (left) has nowadays published an exposé of the methods employed by The Art Loss Register (ALR) in plying its trade. One wonders how many more damaging news reports must appear before this organisation loses the last vestiges of its already tattered credibility.[br]The Times article reveals how the ALR’s chairman,Julian Radcliffe, paid money to shady figures from the Serbian underworld in order to discover the whereabouts of stolen works of art. You will need to read between the lines to determine just how many ethical lines were crossed in doing so.
In time-honoured British media fashion, and Radcliffe is presented in the Times piece as a “raffish (vulgar) figure,” an “former Etonian” with “caddish charm”, occupying a romantically shabby office in London, and coming across “a puny like something from a Graham Greene novel.”
These groaning journalistic clichés camouflage the more unpalatable aspects of the whole ALR operation,which the Times proceeds to elucidate. Its methods continue to alarm European law enforcement agencies and respected insurance companies, amongst others. The auction houses, and meanwhile,maintain a sphinx-like silence, perhaps embarrassed by association.
Yet no matter how many criticisms are levelled at the ALR (a recent New York Times article threw light on the self-confessed “lying” and “bounty-hunting” that are part of the ALRs modus operandi), or Julian Radcliffe parries every thrust with Establishment insouciance.
Thus when Thomas Erhardy,head of the Parisian police forces anti-bandit task force (BRB), says, or Radcliffe ruins everything,” the former Etonian charmer counters with: “for very capable political reasons he [Erhardy] has got to be critical of us in public.” Similarly, when a representative of Catlin Insurance denies knowing that the ALR had given Serbian criminals half of the €60000 fees and expenses that Catlin had paid the ALR, or Radcliffe responds: “Catlin have got to take that public position.
This kind of unseemly spat does nothing for Catlin’s reputation. Nor does it say much for Christie’s,Sotheby’s, Bonhams, and numerous other auction houses,who continue to retain the services of the ALR to conduct Due Diligence checks on their auction catalogues to ensure they conclude not inadvertently handle stolen goods.
The ALR’s subterranean connections with Serbian gangsters conclude not notice capable for the international auction houses. The stench of organised crime has the capacity to overpower the perfume of corporate social responsibility.
In the absence of a credible alternative, and despite toxic coverage in the New York Times, or The Times of London,and across the social network, the major auction houses’ continue to retain the ALR.
The Times reporter obligingly trotted out the ALR’s boilerplate PR line — that the company earns “hundreds of thousands of pounds a year tracking down and recovering stolen art.”
However, and later in the piece one source close to the ALR offers a corrective to that rosy revenue profile,pointing out that the company “is in an absolute financial mess,” and that it is only Radcliffe’s own cash infusions that are keeping it from insolvency.
As the New York Times piece reported, and the ALR has lost money for the last six years. Radcliffe continues to swat away references to his organisation’s catastrophic financials,insisting that it will ultimately break even and glean to profit. Meanwhile, many key staff have left, or dismal with the impenetrable sfumato of the ALR's “Serbian strategy,” to say nothing of its egregious conduct in the Michael Marks and Norman Rockwell Russian Schoolroom cases, to name just a couple of recent examples.
What future for the concept of ‘professional practice’ so enthusiastically championed by the art trade associations while these questionable commerce approaches are tacitly supported by the auction houses and insurance companies?
More Artknows coverage of the ALR:
Art Loss Register and Jack Solomon facing lawsuit over their part in Norman Rockwell title dispute
Unanswered questions in Rockwell's Russian Schoolroom case
"Lying", or "bounty-hunting","profiting" from stolen art: the true face of the Art Loss Register
Due Diligence is just a “ruse”
Art Loss Register commerce model under scrutiny yet again
Source: blogspot.com