L‘general counsel has requested on Monday a two-year suspended prison sentence against the former electrician Pierre Le Guennec and his wife Danielle continued before the court of appeal of Aix-en-Provence for the concealment of 271 works of Picasso, accusing him of having “lied” and refusing to believe in their version of a “gift”.
The judgment will be delivered on 16 December. These requirements correspond to the convictions of the couple in the first instance, in march 2015, by the criminal court of Grasse. The defendants had appealed from the judgment, as well as the floor. They face a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and 375.000 eur os fine or one-half the value of the illegal possessions. Their lawyers have asked for further information, or to default them to relax a bit.
“I do not believe in the version of the donation” supported by the defendants, said Monday the attorney-general Christophe Raffin. “I think that it is a subtraction-a Pablo Picasso aging and Jacqueline more than ever focused on her husband”, he estimated.
Up to this hearing, the husband Guennec had claimed to have obtained the bag, which contained a cardboard box with the works of the hands of the husband Picasso in 1971 or 1972, before the artist’s death in 1973. Monday, they argued that Jacqueline Picasso, the last wife of the artist, had made a gift of these 271 works after the death of the artist.
“We may ask ourselves if what we are presented as truth today is not still a lie”, was launched by the attorney general. “Mr and Mrs Le Guennec, on multiple points you have lied,” ; he accused.
At the beginning of the hearing, Mr Le Guennec, the trembling voice and the expression awkward, had explained that “Madame Picasso Jacqueline had problems with Claude Picasso, son of the artist. A few months after the death of the painter, “she asked me kindly to put in me in reserve garbage bags”, between 15 and 17, has sued the former electrician.
later, she would have asked her to return them to him, and would have asked to keep the last, saying: “keep it, it’s for you”. According to the defendant, it was “may-be” to avoid these bags to the inventory of the estate. He claimed not to have told the truth earlier, by “fear that (l)’accuses, as well as mrs., of stealing these bags”.
Me Éric Dupond-Moretti, lawyer of the accused, claimed to have reached the “difficult” this version of its client there are only a few days. “I have the absolute certainty of their innocence̶ 1;, he pleaded. “I’m sure Jacqueline has hidden a number of works, not for concealment”.
-”True veneration of small people”-
The lawyer has asked for further information to “verify whether other works were able to be set aside by Jacqueline Picasso, not necessarily for commercial purposes”, a request which opposed the general counsel.
Me Antoine Vey, another lawyer for the couple, argued the relaxed “in the alternative”, if the supplemental information was not granted by the Court.
“He is sitting on a fortune and he will not try to sell one or two things in a gallery-owner rogue ? (…) And they went to a Picasso painting to bring the works, it is rational to do that?” still threw Me Dupond-Moretti.
The works, not signed or identified at the time of the death of the painter in 1973, had resurfaced when Mr Le Guennec was presented to Claude Picasso in order to authenticate 180 as well as a book 91 designs. The heirs had immediately filed a complaint.
Insisting throughout the hearing on the origins and education modest couple in his seventies, Me Dupond-Moretti has pointed to the “deference” of the husband Guennec for the one that “years after his death, they still call +Madame+”. A “true veneration of the little people”, he observed.
Jean-Jacques Neuer, lawyer for Claude Ruiz-Picasso – son of the painter and the only representative of the civil parties present at the hearing denounced a “lie mind-blowing”, saying that this case touched on the “darkest and powerful in the art market’ and support the thesis of a “money laundering international works stolen”.
In the first instance, the court had decided to hand over the works to the son of the artist, Claude Ruiz-Picasso, representing the six heirs to the trial. The public prosecutor had requested a five-year suspended sentence against the couple, stating that he had been prejudiced by “the trust” and “memory” of Pablo Picasso.
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