MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AP) — Prosecutors in Argentina on Thursday charged the daughter of a fugitive Nazi official with attempting to cover an 18th-century portray from authorities following revelations that it had been stolen from a Jewish artwork supplier throughout World Warfare II.
The federal prosecutor answerable for the case introduced the cover-up cost a day after Patricia Kadgien, one of many daughters of high-level Nazi officer Friedrich Kadgien, handed “Portrait of a Girl” by Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi to the Argentine judiciary eight a long time after it was stolen.
The destiny of the work stays unclear, pending a call within the case. The inheritor of Jacques Goudstikker — the Dutch-Jewish artwork collector who owned the portray earlier than Nazis confiscated his world-famous stock — has made a authorized declare to get the portray again, her attorneys have stated.
Goudstikker died in a shipwreck in 1940 whereas fleeing the Netherlands as German troops superior. He bought his assortment, which included Rembrandts and Vermeers, below duress and much under market worth. At the least 1,100 stolen works from his gallery stay lacking.
The Argentine court docket has requested that the portray be displayed on the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires forward of any additional switch overseas. The museum didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Patricia Kadgien, 59, and her husband, Juan Carlos Cortegoso, 62, have been below home arrest on suspicion of concealing the portray since police raided their house on Monday for the second time in as many weeks with out discovering “Portrait of a Girl.”
Kadgien, with matted dirty-blond hair and sun shades on her head, wore a glance that combined concern and puzzlement as she listened to Prosecutor Carlos Martínez in a jam-packed courtroom. Martínez stated that Kadgien’s and her husband’s efforts to cover the portray over a number of days following its sudden look in an actual property itemizing amounted to obstruction of justice.
Cortegoso gazed straight forward, his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face.
After the listening to the couple was launched from home arrest however barred from touring overseas and required to inform the court docket each time they go away their registered deal with.
Images of the portray hanging in Kadgien’s lounge in Mar del Plata surfaced final month for the primary time in eight a long time in a web-based actual property commercial.
Dutch journalists investigating Kadgien’s previous in Argentina – the place he took refuge after the collapse of the Third Reich – noticed “Portrait of a Girl” hanging above a inexperienced velvet sofa in the lounge throughout a 3D tour of the home on the market.
After recognizing it as the identical portrait listed as lacking in worldwide archives of Nazi-looted artwork, the newspaper Algemeen Dagblad revealed an exposé on Aug. 25 that grabbed headlines world wide.
Alerted by worldwide police company Interpol, Argentine authorities raided the home and different properties belonging to Patricia Kadgien and her sister Alicia, seizing a rifle, a .32-caliber revolver and several other work from the Nineteenth-century that they think might have been equally stolen throughout WWII.
However police couldn’t discover “Portrait of a Girl.” They discovered scuff marks and a pastoral tapestry on Patricia Kadgien’s lounge wall the place the portrait had been photographed.
The true property advert, first posted in February, was swiftly taken down. Prosecutors on Thursday stated that safety footage confirmed individuals eradicating the “on the market” signal from Kadgien’s entrance yard as media scrutiny intensified final week.
In presenting the fees, Martínez informed the court docket that the couple was “conscious that the paintings was being sought by the legal justice system and worldwide authorities” however however went to lengths to cover it.
“It was solely after a number of police raids that they turned it in,” he stated.
With the defendants below home arrest on Monday, their lawyer, Carlos Murias, filed a petition with a civil court docket in Mar del Plata asking that Kadgien be allowed to public sale the portray.
The court docket rejected the request, arguing that it lacked jurisdiction given the portray’s provenance.
Prosecutor Martínez informed reporters on Thursday that his workplace was knowledgeable by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Marei von Saher, the inheritor to artwork supplier Goudstikker, lodged a authorized declare to “Portrait of a Girl” on the bureau’s New York workplace.
The FBI declined to remark.
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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
