The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver

Author:Vernon Silver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780061882982
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Italian art squad’s attempt to crack open Editions Services with cross-border paperwork seemed to be working. Judge Jean-Pierre Trembley in Geneva agreed to the request, and on September 12, 1995, Inspector Alain Baudin and Inspector Lovo of the Swiss police interviewed Jacques. This time, the administrator of the Panamanian shell company had to cooperate fully, and two Italian Carabinieri would be in the room at Baudin’s office to take notes.

Jacques explained again that he was just the administrator of the company, which had been established in 1981, and he reiterated why he hadn’t been more helpful during his initial questioning eight years earlier. “At the time of my previous deposition, I essentially refused to reveal the owners of the three pieces consigned to Sotheby’s because there wasn’t any official criminal case,” he said. This time was different.

“Editions Services S.A. still exists. On February 24, 1986, it was bought by Mr. Giacomo Medici,” Jacques said, according to his written deposition. That meant that after the de Marchi robbery—and also after Hydra Galerie’s kerfluffle with Lot 540 at Sotheby’s—Medici had found himself a new vehicle for doing business. Medici’s purchase of Editions in 1986 also made him the owner of the company when it put the three alleged de Marchi objects up for sale at Sotheby’s in 1987.

But most important, the Carabinieri finally had the name they were looking for behind Editions: Medici.

And Jacques wasn’t finished talking. “The aim of this company consists solely of putting antiquities up for sale at Sotheby’s. Medici puts them up for sale in the name of the company. The income from the sales goes to Mr. Medici,” he said. He even gave the investigators Editions Services’ bank account number at UBS in Geneva. If that weren’t enough, Jacques, seemingly afraid of getting dragged into the case, coughed up an invaluable detail.

“I can also add that in 1991 Editions Services S.A. rented room number C 4.17.6 at the Geneva Free Port,” he said.

This gave the Italian art squad the lead they needed. The Geneva Free Port is a modern warehouse complex with special customs status. Companies that rent space there can bring goods into Switzerland and then store them or sell them at the Free Port without paying import taxes. Buyers can export the goods, also duty-free. For merchants that used Switzerland as a transshipment point, the arrangement was ideal. They didn’t pay tax, and anything they exported appeared to have originated from Swiss soil, as opposed to, say, Italian.

The Carabinieri wasted no time. They knew Jacques could easily let Medici or his associates know he had told them that Medici was behind Editions Services and that Editions had a warehouse space. Immediately after the interrogation, the officers contacted the Latina magistrate, Riccardo Audino. The next day—September 13, 1995—Audino sent another urgent judiciary assistance request to Judge Trembley. “In the course of the investigation,” he wrote, “it emerged that the company Editions Services S.A. has used some rooms in the Geneva Free Port.

“Because these rooms could

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