The Art Newspaper

Guilty: Lawyer who hid stolen art for 30 years

Robert Mardirosian was handed loot by client who had just burgled Massachusetts collector

By Martha Lufkin | Web only
Published online 25 Sep 08

Cezanne, Bouilloire et fruits, 1888-1890

BOSTON. A retired Massachusetts lawyer who tried to sell seven stolen pictures worth $30m, which a client had left with him shortly before being shot dead, will be sentenced in November. In August, a federal jury in Boston found Robert Mardirosian guilty of knowingly possessing stolen goods that had crossed a United States boundary. The 1978 theft from collector Michael Bakwin was the largest home burglary in Massachusetts history. Mardirosian, 72, now faces a maximum sentence of ten years in prison plus three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. The stolen works included Cézanne’s painting Bouilloire et Fruits, 1888-1890.

Mardirosian had secretly held the art in Massachusetts after receiving it shortly after the theft, but in 1988 moved it out of the US and eventually to a Swiss bank.

In his efforts to profit from the paintings, he demanded a finder’s fee of $1m, but kept his possession of the art secret by working in London and Switzerland through lawyers and a Panamanian shell company, Erie International Trading Co (Erie). When he attempted to move the stolen paintings to London for sale, an investigation by the Art Loss Register (ALR), the stolen art database, identified the theft.

The Cézanne, which was returned to Mr Bakwin first, was sold at Sotheby’s in London for $29.3m in December 1999. The remaining six works were also recovered. The case was investigated by the FBI with assistance from the ALR.

Comments