On May 2, 2001, while the new millennium was not well under way, one of the biggest auction house scandals came to light.
A federal court in the United States has found that former presidents of two major auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Alfred Taubman and Anthony Tennad, were charged with illegally charging higher commissions than customers of other auction houses. Countries.
According to US authorities, US customers alone were charged more than $ 400 million in commissions between 1993 and 1998.
At the time, the two houses controlled more than 90% of the world’s auctions of works of art, jewelry and furniture.
The scandal was unveiled a year earlier, in 2000. Two years ago, a major change took place in Christie’s, as it was bought out entirely by businessman François Pino, in exchange for $ 1.2 billion, who then withdrew house from the stock market.
Pino’s decision to fire’s chief executive, Christopher Daving, without compensation for his 34 years at the company, prompted the latter to make the revelations.
The two former presidents, having reached an agreement with each other, forced the executive directors to charge higher commissions.
Taubman was sentenced to one year in prison in December 2001 following a trial in the United States.
But for Tedant, who was anointed Sir, justice in Britain could not impose a sentence on him, as there was no legal service that could prosecute under British law.
The scandal had shaken the purchase of valuables and dealt a blow to the two houses in terms of prestige.
However, as history has shown, in the long run it did not affect their scope, as they remain to this day the two largest auction houses in the world.
moneyreview.gr with information from BBC
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