A court in Milan ends the battle between the creditors of the former owners of the painting ‘Coffret, compotier et tasse’, as “the public interest prevails”
Treasury always wins in the end. The long judicial soap opera starring the painting ‘Coffret, compotier et tasse’, made by Pablo Picasso in 1909 during his Cubist period and valued at around 10 million euros, was concluded on Tuesday with the verdict of a Milan court that carried transferred his property to the Italian Treasury, thereby rejecting the arguments of the other two parties claiming to be the owners of the work. It was the heir to an investor who had acquired 80% of the painting and the creditors of a bankrupt company whose owners were the former owners of the Picasso, who sold fraudulently because they were under embargo on their tax debts.
Following the decision of Judge Anna Calabi, collected this Wednesday by the Milanese newspaper ‘Corriere della Sera’, the canvas will return to Italy to probably be exhibited in a yet-to-be-determined museum after nearly a decade in the United States, where the was exhibited. will be auctioned in 2013. The operation was halted thanks to the intervention of the Italian legal system, which has finally determined whose painting it is, appealing to the common good. In the conflict between private interests, represented by the buyer’s heir and by the company’s creditors, and those of the state, derived from the debt the former owners had to the treasury, “the public interest says,” says the magistrate in the sense . The other two parties involved will have to settle ‘through other assets’.
At the center of this intricate battle over the ownership of ‘Coffret, compotier et tasse’ is Italian business couple Gabriella Amati and Angelo Maj, who were arrested in 2011 for embezzlement of public funds, among other economic crimes. This couple owned the company responsible for collecting local taxes in Naples and other Italian municipalities between 2005 and 2009. When the contract expired, they continued to collect the fees from the citizens, after which they collected the money. transferred to other accounts and refused to transfer the money to the local authorities. In the end, they built up more than 50 million euros in debt with governments and various private creditors.
With water up to their necks, Amati and Maj tried to gain liquidity by selling the Picasso, which, according to Italian media, they acquired to launder black money. The Italian investor Fiorenzo Consonni bought 80% of the ownership of the work from them, who brought it to the United States and tried to sell it in an auction house in 2013, an operation that was blocked thanks to the intervention of the Italian guard of finance and justice. The businesswoman had already been sentenced to 9 years in prison (her husband had died), so the painting and the rest of her possessions could not be sold without first paying off the debts to the treasury.
After Consonni’s death, his son continued to fight for the ownership of the Picasso in a legal battle that was also followed by the private creditors of this fraudulent marriage. To try to get some of their money back, they will now have to wait for Amati’s other assets to be liquidated, who is not known to have owned other valuable works of art such as ‘Coffret, compotier et tasse’.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
