[NYTr] Cuban Exile Sugar Sultans Whine of Lost Spoils
ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
sent by Walter Lippmann (cubanews)
[Mary Anastasia O'Grady has been described as the Head-Whiner-in-Charge
against Cuba in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her latest
contribution guarantees she is going to retain this designation.
Property owners from every other country in the world who had property
expropriated by the Cuban Revolution negotiated settlements with the Cuban
Government. Only the United States Government kept US citizens and
corporations from reaching settlements with the Cuban government. The
article here refers to the "Act of State" doctrine, which effectively
recognizes the national sovereignty of all states. In response, the US has
enacted the Helms-Burton law which attempts to impose US law on other
countries. It's a perfect example of what Cuba calls the "extraterritorial"
nature of the blockade legislation.
More on the Fanjuls, Florida's "sugar sultans" here:
http://www.afrocubaweb.com/sugarsultans.htm
http://www.afrocubaweb.com/cubambiz.htm
Walter Lippmann]
The Wall Street Journal - Oct 29, 2004
Castro's Art Theft [sic] Puts Sotheby's on the Spot
by Mary Anastasia O'Grady
Any art thief worth his salt knows that pinching a painting is less than
half the job. Success comes only when the item is unloaded to a collector
and the cash is safely in hand.
This is the tale of a painting by Spanish impressionist Joaquin Sorolla y
Bastida (1863-1923). "A View of Malaga" belonged to a private collector in
Havana. Part one of the story is the heist: Fidel Castro "appropriated" the
work in 1961.
As for part two, it is alleged that the Cuban dictator sold it some years
ago to an Italian who arranged for Sotheby's to put it on the auction block.
Now, the pre-heist owner, the Cuban-American Fanjul Family Trust, wants
restitution, or at least satisfaction. It has asked the State Department to
investigate whether Title IV of the Helms-Burton Act, which authorizes the
visa revocation of parties knowingly trafficking in stolen Cuban property,
should apply.
Civilized society widely recognizes that Nazi loot is stolen property and
ought to be returned to its rightful owner or family heirs. Indeed just two
days ago, the FBI reportedly seized a painting from a Chicago art collector
that authorities believe belongs to the heir of a Holocaust survivor living
in California.
It is no great leap of logic to extend this principle to art expropriated by
other tyrannies and passed in the shadows to collectors in exchange for
dollars. In a just world, the collector would be regarded as an accessory to
a despot who plunders his own country.
Yet Europe broadly applies the Act of State Doctrine -- which says that if a
foreign power is recognized, then its domestic policies are not to be
challenged in the courts, even if there seems to be a moral imperative to do
so. That's why the Fanjul family has turned to Helms-Burton's Title IV as a
way to put the art world on notice that this is stolen property and not fair
game for dealers.
The painting in question was acquired in the 1930s or 1940s by Jose
Gomez-Mena, who left his estate to his daughter Lilian Gomez-Mena (Mrs.
Alfonso Fanjul). According to the trust's lawyers -- the Miami firm of
Steel, Hector and Davis -- after the Castro regime issued an "expropriating
decree, the Sorolla was taken to the National Museum of Fine Arts in
Havana."
The Fanjuls, having decamped to the U.S. to escape Castro's repression,
tried to keep track of their property over the decades. In the mid-1980s the
collection showed up in a Cuban traveling exhibition in Europe. After the
demise of the Soviet Union, the family became concerned that Castro,
desperate for foreign exchange, might try to sell the collection. In April
1993 the Fanjul family says it sent letters to a number of international art
auction houses, including Sotheby's, to notify them of their ownership
claim. In October 1993 the family put the paintings on the Art Loss
Register. The London-based ALR's purpose is to make sure that stolen art
does not turn up on the international art market.
Yet in April 1995, Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the great-granddaughter of the
artist, received a request from Sotheby's to authenticate "A View of
Malaga." The letter dated April 20, 1995, says that the auction house wished
to include the painting in a June sale. Ms. Pons-Sorolla felt sure that the
painting had come from Cuba and she alerted the Fanjul family.
A break in the case came when Shanker Singham, of Steel, Hector and Davis in
Miami, plowing through related court documents, realized that there was a
possible connection between a Sotheby's employee in charge of the European
impressionist division and an Italian art dealer called Bruno Scaioli who
specialized in collecting in Latin America.
The British art journalist Peter Watson made the same link in his 1997 book
"Sotheby's: The Inside Story." According to Mr. Watson, in a piece titled
"Castro Stole My Art" in last week's Times of London Sunday Magazine, "From
documents leaked to me, it appeared that Scaioli . . . once had an
arrangement to find art for the auction house in South America."
Mr. Singham hired art loss investigator Simon Hornby, who, posing as a
broker for an interested collector, went to Italy to meet with Mr. Scaioli.
The undercover work was slow and nerve-wracking. But on a second visit to
Mr. Scaioli's apartment in July 2000, the sleuth says that he was shown a
Sorolla. He asked if it was the "View of Harbor," another name for the
painting in question. He was told it was.
In the same Times piece, Mr. Watson reports that during that meeting,
"Scaioli had with him the catalogue of the Spanish exhibitions, where it
said that the painting had once been in the Gomez-Mena collection. He
confirmed that it had been authenticated by Blanca Pons-Sorolla, and said he
had bought it from the Cuban authorities about eight years before."
Sotheby's says that it "put the Fanjul's lawyers in touch with the lawyers
for the current owner in 1998." Mr. Singham says that is true and that the
lawyer told him that Sotheby's held the painting "to his client's order
between 1993 and 1995."
Sotheby's further points out that it "never did offer Port of Malaga at
auction." It says that after almost a decade it "cannot reconstruct
precisely what occurred. However, even if Sotheby's did consider including
the painting at an auction in 1995, this is a very public process, together
with the distribution of our catalogues to the Art Loss Register, and the
Fanjuls would have had every opportunity to pursue whatever legal claim to
the painting they believed they had."
The trouble with the court route in Europe, Mr. Singham reiterates, is the
Act of State Doctrine. Previous efforts to recover the Gomez-Mena Collection
have been discouraged by legal counsel because it is expected that the act
would be applied. That's why he believes that Helms-Burton's Title IV is the
best weapon to use against the alleged perpetrators. After all, a dictator's
contempt for property rights ought to have consequences.
*
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