PARIS: A French court on Wednesday sentenced a top antiques expert to jail for duping the Palace of Versailles and wealthy collectors into buying furniture he had helped build, claiming it dated from the 18th century.
The ruling from the court in Pontoise, north of Paris, caps one of the biggest forgery scandals to rock the rarified world of France’s top museums.
Bill Pallot, 61, along with five other people as well as a prominent gallery, stood trial in the spring.
Pallot and woodcarver Bruno Desnoues were convicted of having produced and authenticated chairs they sold, which they passed off as historic pieces that once adorned the rooms of the likes of Madame du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV, or of Queen Marie-Antoinette.
Customers duped by the pieces included the Palace of Versailles and wealthy collectors including a member of the Qatari royal family.
Pallot was sentenced to a four-year term including four months behind bars, fined 200,000 euros ($230,000) and handed a five-year ban on working as an expert.
He will not go to jail having spent time in detention after his arrest.
Known for his distinctive long hair and three-piece suits, Pallot has been described by magazine Vanity Fair as “the world’s leading expert on the works of 18th-century France.”
Paris Match branded him “the Bernard Madoff of art”, referring to the late American financier who devised a notorious pyramid scheme.
– ‘A little harsh’ –
Pallot said the sentence was “a little harsh financially,” although he was satisfied that his apartment would not be seized, contrary to the prosecutor’s demand.
“We thought we’d do it for fun, to see if the art market would notice or not,” Pallot has told the court.
“It went without a hitch,” he added.
Desnoues, a prominent woodcarver, was sentenced to a three-year term including four months behind bars, and fined 100,000 euros.
In court, he presented himself as a humble artisan uninterested in money and motivated only by his love of art and “the pleasure of working, of making beautiful things”.
A lawyer for the Palace of Versailles implied the men got away too easily, denouncing “the particularly diabolical manoeuvres” of the two main defendants and pointing to “clean, white-collar trafficking.”
“When you are caught red-handed, you are not sentenced to very long prison terms,” said Corinne Hershkovitch.
“We feel that we are not protected for the future,” she added.
– ‘Pallot’s blessing’ –
The pair pocketed nearly 1.2 million euros in commissions.
Galleries and auction houses made even more, selling fake furniture pieces to the Palace of Versailles and billionaire collectors.
After the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was completely emptied, with thousands of royal furniture pieces and other items dispersed at revolutionary sales.
Nearly half of Pallot and Desnoues’ fakes were acquired through various channels by the Palace of Versailles, which has since the 1950s sought to refurnish the former home of French royalty.
“Indeed, Versailles’s decision to purchase the chairs hinged on Pallot’s blessing,” Vanity Fair said in 2018.
“And based on Pallot’s imprimatur, the government classified two of his fake lots as national treasures.”
Accused of failing to carry out sufficient checks, the prestigious Kraemer antique gallery was acquitted. The public prosecutor had sought a fine of 700,000 euros.
Intermediaries between the forgers and the final buyers believed they had been misled by Pallot’s reputation, and charges for most of them were dismissed during the eight-year-long investigation.
Unnoticed for years, the scam caused an estimated 4.5 million euros in damage.
The fraud was discovered by accident during an investigation into the lavish lifestyle of a Portuguese couple who were laundering Desnoues’ money.
When the scandal erupted in 2016, the ministry of culture swiftly ordered an audit of Versailles’s acquisitions policy.
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