Despite the Advocate General’s indictment, the former president of the Louvre and the ex-scientific director of the France Museum agency remain prosecuted for “whitening and complicity in a scam in organized gang” after purchases of Objects with questionable provenance by the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
by Roxana Azimi
In November 2022, the wind seemed to turn in favor of Jean-Luc Martinez, the former president of the Louvre, and Jean-François Charnier, ex-scientific director of the France Museums agency. During a hearing, on November 4, 2022, before the investigating chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, the Advocate General had requested the cancellation of their indictment for suspicions of “laundering and complicity in ‘Essay on an organized gang “. This same room, however, confirmed, Friday, February 3, their indictment.
The case concerns the purchase, by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, of seven objects of Egyptian art of questionable origin between 2014 and 2018, for an amount of 50 million euros. Six acquisition files had passed through the hands of France Museums, the agency created to pilot the project of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, in particular a engraved stele of the name of Tutankhamon as well as a funerary set of Princess Hénouttaouy. A final purchase, made live by the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2018, concerns a Cleopatra head worth 35 million euros.
All these objects had passed through a Lebanese-German merchant, Roben Dib, representative of a family of antique dealers in the police close to the police, the Simonian, and had been proposed by Christophe Kunicki, an expert in archeology working in particular For the Pierre Bergé and Associate sales house. If the latter, still indicted, are suspected of having produced false documents and invented fallacious origins to “whiten” hundreds of looted archaeological objects, he was accused of Jean-Luc Martinez and Jean-François Charnier D ‘Have closed their eyes on their origin.
In November 2022, their lawyers, François Artuphel and Corinne Hershkovitch, had pleaded the absence of serious and concordant indices that could justify an indictment. The first had first challenged the modalities of the very long police custody of Jean-Luc Martinez, who only had access to a doctor for sixteen o’clock after claiming it. On the merits, he highlighted the disabilities of the investigation, recalling, in the case of the Tutankhamon stele, that the alert signals of the Egyptologist Marc Gabolde dated 2019, three years after their purchase. In addition, the various hearings confirmed that Jean-Luc Martinez did not take part in the investigation of the files.
He did not belong more to Jean-François Charnier to personally instruct the acquisition files, but to pilot his teams supported by the heritage departments of the Musées de France. “Not only did Jean-François Charnier respected or enforced the rules that applied to his profession, but also he implemented a more successful research procedure than that followed by the museums of France”, defends Corinne Hershkovitch . These elements with discharge made it possible to brush a more complex table, and to qualify the portrait drawn up by the minutes that MO12345lemonde was able to consult, revealing notable differences between the elements of the file, and the interpretation made by the Investigators.
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