[MSN] retired lawyer who federal authorities say negotiated to sell paintings allegedly stolen by a former client, including a $30 million Cezanne still life, was arrested Tuesday at Logan Airport as he got off a plane from France.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Lawyer charged in case of stolen art
By Jesse Harlan Alderman, Associated Press Writer  |  February 13, 2007

BOSTON --A retired lawyer who federal authorities say negotiated to sell
paintings allegedly stolen by a former client, including a $30 million
Cezanne still life, was arrested Tuesday at Logan Airport as he got off a
plane from France.

Robert R. Mardirosian, 72, of Falmouth, Mass., and St. Paule de Vence,
France, was charged in U.S. District Court with possessing, concealing,
storing, and attempting to sell stolen goods, U.S. Attorney Michael J.
Sullivan announced.

"People seem to get away with all kinds of stuff when it comes to art
robbery," said Michael Bakwin, the paintings' owner and a former inn keeper
in Stockbridge, Mass., now living in Suffolk, Va. "I don't know if there is
any closure, but it's nice to see that people who break the law don't get
away with it."

In 1978, Bakwin returned to his home in the Berkshire mountains to find
seven paintings missing from the dining room walls. "Pitcher and Fruits," a
painting by French impressionist Paul Cezanne, was among the missing pieces.

Nearly 30 years later, authorities allege in a complaint unsealed Tuesday in
federal court that Mardirosian hauled the paintings on a bizarre circuit
from his Watertown, Mass., law office to Swiss banks and London auction
houses, all under the cover of a Panamanian shell company he created to sell
the works.

"It is extremely disheartening that an attorney charged with upholding the
law, as the defendant was in this case, would disregard that duty and for
decades conceal the whereabouts of priceless works of art for no other
reason than greed," Sullivan said in a written statement.

Last year Mardirosian told The Boston Globe that the paintings' alleged
thief, David Colvin, left the pieces at his law office in Watertown. He told
the newspaper he represented Colvin in an unrelated case.

"He was going to bring them to Florida to fence them, but I told him that if
he ever got caught with them with the other case hanging over his head, he'd
be in real trouble," he told The Globe.

In 1979, a year after the artwork went missing, Colvin was killed in
Pittsfield, Mass., over a gambling debt.

In 1988, Mardirosian moved the paintings to Monaco, thinking he might have a
legal claim to ownership or a 10 percent "finder's fee," according to a May
2006 affidavit from FBI Special Agent Geoffrey Kelly, also unsealed Tuesday.

Lloyd's of London was contacted in 1999 by an unknown person about insuring
the paintings before sale, the affidavit says, and discovered they were
listed with the database Art Loss Register as having been stolen. It says
Julian Radcliffe, chairman of Art Loss Register, determined that the
paintings were being sold by a Panamanian corporation called Erie
International Trading Company, later found to be registered to Mardirosian.

Radcliffe contacted Bakwin and brokered a deal with unnamed agents of Erie,
who agreed to return the Cezanne in exchange for the other six paintings.
Two months after retrieving the Cezanne, Bakwin auctioned it through
Sotheby's in London for $29.3 million.

As part of the contract, the owner of Erie agreed to disclose his identity
in a sealed envelope. A British judge later ruled the contract void because
Bakwin "signed it under duress." He ordered the envelope unsealed, revealing
Erie's owner as Robert Mardirosian, and ordered the lawyer to pay Bakwin $3
million.

The six works include two each by Chaim Soutine, Maurice de Vlaminck,
Maurice Utrillo, by French painter Jean Jansen.

Bakwin said four paintings, which authorities say Mardirosian tried to sell
through Sotheby's in 2004, will be returned to him in Virginia. He said he
did not plan to auction them.

"I have a fairly large home, so I'll display them where they fit," he said.

Investigators believe the two remaining paintings, both Jansen works, are
being held by a Swiss friend of Mardirosian.

Three lawyers for Mardirosian did not return calls or e-mails from The
Associated Press.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office did not return an after-hours
call. The Cape Cod Times reported on its Web site that Mardirosian was
released on $500,000 bail and ordered to stay at his son's home in Belmont.


http://www.boston.com/