Fakes, fakes everywhere (ctd.)

February 1 2017

Picture: New York Times

The art dealer who sold dozens of fake works of art through the Knoedler Gallery, in a fraud totalling some $80m, has been spared jail. Glafira Rosales, above, said that she had been violently bullied into the scheme by her boyfriend. He, Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, is safely in Spain, his extradition to the US having been blocked. More here.

This seems to be another case of lenient sentences where crimes involving art is concerned. Rosales, whatever her boyfriend did, actively perpetrated the fraud on multiple occasions over many years, and evidently enjoyed the profits of her crime. But she avoids jail. Meanwhile, the faker himself, Pei-Shen Qian, is safely in China. And Anne Freedman, the director of the Knoedler gallery who sold these pictures, is now running her own eponymous gallery in New York. It's hard to see how justice has been done here.

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