Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum by Jason Felch

Author:Jason Felch [Felch, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780547538020
Google: 1ucfMMxTu0sC
Amazon: 0151015015
Barnesnoble: 0151015015
Goodreads: 9465604
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2012-06-04T17:37:19+00:00

PART III

“AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, WHAT FORGIVENESS?”

15. TROUBLESOME DOCUMENTS

ON OCTOBER 17, 2000, an outside lawyer for the Getty received an alarming inquiry from an acquaintance at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. Would he be representing the Getty in the Italian criminal investigation into looted antiquities?

What investigation? asked Richard Martin, a partner in the Manhattan firm Heller Ehrman. His source explained that Paolo Ferri, a magistrate in Rome, was asking the U.S. attorney’s office to subpoena all Getty documents related to eleven antiquities the museum had bought while Marion True was curator. Ferri was looking for proof to support the seizure and return of the items, which he claimed were looted. He also wanted to interview True.

News of the investigation blind-sided the Getty’s attorneys. They had never heard of Ferri and knew nothing about his investigation. It was not surprising, however, that the U.S. attorney’s office assumed that Martin would be representing the Getty in the case. He had powerful friends in both the American and Ital ian legal establishments and had been advising the Getty about a lengthy dispute with Italy over the museum’s acquisition of a painting.

Martin had started his legal career as a highly regarded assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, where he’d helped another assistant U.S. attorney, Louis Freeh (the future director of the FBI), and his boss, Rudy Giuliani (the future mayor of New York City), bring a massive Sicilian drug ring to trial. During the famed “Pizza Connection” case, one of the most complex Mafia prosecutions in U.S. history, Martin had forged close alliances with Italian authorities, particularly anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who was later assassinated in a spectacular car bombing. After winning convictions in the case, Martin had landed a post at the American embassy in Rome, where he had handled international judicial assistance requests like the one now targeting the Getty.

The consequences of this request were immediately clear to Martin and the Getty’s in-house attorneys. If it was honored by the U.S. attorney’s office, it could expose the Getty to a vast Italian fishing expedition aimed at taking away some of the museum’s art and impugning the reputation of its respected antiquities curator. That could not be allowed to happen. Martin asked his contact for a little time to try to clear up the apparent misunderstanding with Ferri directly. The U.S. attorney’s office told Ferri that his request needed to be redrafted. It was overly broad and would have to be more focused if it was to be honored.

Martin contacted the Getty’s acting general counsel, Penny Cobey. An East Coast transplant, Cobey had assumed control of the legal department in September 1998 after the departure of Christine Steiner. Cobey was a tall redhead with a law degree and a Ph.D. in English literature, both from Harvard. But it was her background in real estate and construction law that had helped her secure the coveted job at the Getty, which needed to push the Getty Villa project through its final phases of construction.

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