Famous Russian art dealer arrested in New York

As instituted by our FBI for such events, early in the morning of February 26, agents of the bureau came to the apartment building on Little West Street in Lower Manhattan's Financial District and arrested 65-year-old Alexander Khochinsky, a well-known Russian art dealer and hard man, but interesting fate.

In Moscow, but the New Arbat 64-year-old Khochinsky owned an antique salon “Bogema”, behind which he gained fame as a place where you can buy a very expensive gift to a very important person, but Alexander Yakovlevich has already come to Moscow for many years card in New York. His wife Tatiana, the eldest son Michael and granddaughters are naturalized citizens of the United States.

I met Khochinsky at the end of 2009, when the glory of his “Bohemia” played a cruel joke with him. In 2006, on the order of a certain Russian rich man, he bought at Sotheby’s in Paris for about a million dollars of Voltaire’s letters to Empress Catherine II written between 26 and 1768 for 1777 in Paris. Remember how the poet Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy wrote about this in his “History of the Russian State”: “Madame, with you, order will bloom marvelously,” Voltaire and Diderot wrote to her courteously ...

The customer was going to present these letters as a gift to Putin, and Khochinsky, in his words, gave them to the First Channel of Russian television, and specifically to its head Konstantin Ernst. As a result, these letters disappeared, Khochinsky accused Ernst of involvement in their disappearance, and Ernst responded with a counter-accusation of attempted blackmail. Ernst's patrons were stronger, and, as 20 of the New York Times wrote in October 2009, “there are very few chances that the dispute in which he (Khochinsky) turned out to be involved, and which forced him to leave the country, will be settled”.

Five years have passed, and Alexander Khochinsky again went down in history, about which you need to write. In New York, he was arrested on a warrant issued by a Polish judge for possession of property stolen from Poland by the Germans during World War II, and a refusal to return this property to the rightful owner. This is an expensive painting by the 18th century artist Antoine Peng “A Girl with a Pigeon” (sometimes called a “Girl with a Goldfinch”), which Khochinsky considers his own, and the Poles his own.

He did not violate American laws, and the Manhattan federal court is talking about his extradition to the court in Poznan, because the accusation against him there threatens to imprisonment for up to 10 years and corresponds to similar crimes and penalties under US federal law. There is an extradition agreement between our country and Poland - “the arrest and transfer of one state to another (at the latter’s request) of persons suspected or accused of committing a crime (for trial), or persons already convicted by judicial authorities of that other state (to execute a sentence ) ".

Khochinsky categorically rejects the accusation, and our common friend, and also a well-known art dealer Andrei Ruzhnikov in Moscow, told the Internet publication TAN R (The Art Newspaper.Ru) that “the Polish side bases its accusations on extremely unreliable arguments” Nobody produced Khochinsky canvases, ”and“ the actions of the Polish authorities in this situation run counter to all the principles of international law, rather reminding the methods of the Gestapo and the NKVD. ”

In my opinion, to the fair statement of Ruzhnikov, “Poland’s demands are inherently absurd: as a private person, Khochinsky, according to the law of the Russian Federation, has no right to transfer the requested picture abroad, bypassing the Russian Ministry of Culture, the issue of restitution can only be resolved level The Russian authorities did not take a decision on the transfer of the painting, this question has never even been raised. ”

In a letter from the MCC's Manhattan federal prison, where he spent five days and was released on bail of 2 million dollars, Khochinsky said in decent English that in light of the current relationship between Russia, of which he is a citizen, and NATO countries, which includes Poland , his case should be considered purely political, and he himself should not be subject to extradition.

“I understand,” he wrote, “that this is not a criminal matter, but completely political, since Poland is now considered an outpost of NATO at Russia's borders. I understand that this could be the reason for my extradition request to Poland. I am not afraid of this, just as 6 million Jews were not afraid of what is now called the Holocaust. My case is truly unique, unparalleled, and perhaps the last legal case that will show the real United States to its citizens who suffered from the Nazis during World War II. The court over me, which should go to the United States, can be a very important precedent for further lawsuits to Poland over the rights to restitution. ”

Moreover, adds Khochinsky, “the political position of the Polish government obviously coincides with the well-known Polish anti-Semitism. In addition to the role of the Polish collaborators during the Second World War, we remember many Jewish pogroms after the war. The last Jews, who were not killed by the Nazis, were killed by rioters or immigrated from Poland, and now there are no Jews there. ”

After reading such a statement and believing him, any honest American judge would not have signed the warrant for the arrest of Khochinsky. However, in the case of his extradition, there is a preliminary charge (Complaint) which 25 of February submitted to federal magistrate Kevin Fox an assistant federal prosecutor Catherine Riley, receiving an arrest warrant for Alexander Yakovlevich.

“Khochinsky is accused of acquiring or helping sell or helping to hide an item obtained in a prohibited way,” it is written there. “This unlawful conduct was committed in the jurisdiction of the country requesting it, and the reason was that on November 21, 2012, Judge Martha Zaydlevich, in the Regional Court of Poznan, issued a warrant for his arrest. A copy of the decision on the arrest, translated into English is attached ... "

As Prosecutor Riley explained to Judge Fox, the decision to arrest Khochinsky was made “on the basis of the following facts, which were established by the authorities of the Republic of Poland:

a) At the beginning of 2010, Khochinsky acquired the painting “Girl with a Dove”, written by Antoine Peng in 1754.

b) “Girl with a Dove” was included in the catalog of acquisitions of the National Museum of Poznan under accession number 601931 and number 233 ... In 1943, “Girl with Dove” was captured by the Germans of the Third Reich, and the Red Army discovered it in 1945, then it went into the storage of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Treasures registered “Girl with a Pigeon” under accession number 5983 in the database of cultural works missing during the Second World War, and Interpol entered it into the list of stolen works of art under the number 2410.50630-1.1.

c) At the beginning of 2010, Khochinsky contacted the Polish Embassy in Moscow, Russia, and stated that he owns the Girl with the Pigeon and invites Poland to buy it. Khochinsky informed the Polish authorities that the picture belonged to his mother’s family and during the Second World War was transported by his father to the place which is now called Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

d) As Khochinsky asserted, the authenticity of the painting “Girl with a Pigeon” was confirmed in Moscow on July 22 2010 by Matthew Pyotr Michalowski of the National Museum of Poznan, and on February 28 Poland sent Khochinsky an official request for return (picture), which he ignored.

e) 18 May 2010, Khochinsky sent an e-mail to the Polish Embassy in Moscow with a picture of a Girl with a Pigeon. A copy of this photo is attached.

f) In Moscow, Khochinsky owns the antique salon “Bogema”. In June, the Russian authorities, at the request of the Polish government, searched Bohemia for 2012, but did not find the Girl with the Pigeon. In the course of the search, witness Elizaveta Tarnova confirmed that “The Girl with the Pigeon” was not exhibited for long in the salon and was shown to an expert from Poland, and then representatives of Khochinsky took her away.

g) Where the “Girl with the Dove” is now located is not known. ”

Further, the preliminary charge states that “Khochinsky is allegedly located in the Southern District of New York at such an address and“ may disappear after hearing about the issuance of a warrant for his arrest ”.

So that this did not happen, 26 was arrested early in the morning of February, taken out in slippers and a shirt for a bitter cold, sat in a car and, at his request due to a heart attack, was taken to Methodists Hospital for an examination, and by the evening Khochinsky was already inmates of the MCC Prison No. 72010-054.

They took passports from Khochinsky and all members of his family. 9 March he was released on bail of two million dollars in real estate in the form of his apartment on Little West Street, which, according to some data, Alexander Yakovlevich bought in 2008 for two and a half million. From prison, he was transferred there under house arrest, obliging him to wear an electronic watchman bracelet on his ankle.

Explaining the legality of his rights to “Girl with a Pigeon”, Khochinsky wrote that everything was quiet and calm until he voluntarily and legally did not inform the Poles that he agreed to return the painting to them, but under the terms of return (who refused to consider restitution ) does not want to pay for it, but about compensation for real estate, once belonged to the family of his mother in Poland.

All of Khochinsky's relatives from the maternal side, except for her, perished in the Holocaust. “My mother, Maria,” wrote Alexandr Yakovlevich from a Manhattan federal prison, “was born in the Polish city of Przemysl, 26, February 1922, on the very day when, in 2015, I was arrested in my New York apartment. (Picture) was in our family for many years and got to me after my mother died in 1991. I do not know exactly how my parents got it. It may well be that my father, a member of the Second World War, brought this painting from Germany to the USSR after he was injured and lost his hand. Perhaps he traded it for soldier rations. However, it is also possible that he acquired this picture after the war in the USSR. The story of the emergence of this picture from my parents is not known, and there are no documents confirming any transactions with it. ”

In an interview with Radio Liberty, Khochinsky said he didn’t know exactly how he got the picture of Antoine Peng, “because the war ended in 1945, and I was born in 1951, and it never occurred to me to ask:“ Where did this chair come from? Where does this table come from? Where does this picture come from? Where does this carpet come from? ”

When the Polish side did not agree to its terms of returning the painting and broke off negotiations, Khochinsky, as the legal owner of “Girl with a pigeon”, decided to sell it, which he did in Moscow.

“Since I openly owned this picture and sold it in Russia, and Russian law is based on international laws and agreements, and taking into account that I am a legitimate and well-intentioned owner, I always acted strictly according to Russian law, because other laws in Russia they act, ”Khochinsky wrote in an ornate manner from a Manhattan prison in English. - I am still a citizen of Russia. On the other hand, since I am a legal resident of the United States and applied for citizenship more than a year ago, I agree to transfer this matter to law of the United States. But not in Poland, where they are planning not a legal court, but a severe punishment of me, as a Jew who is trying to protect himself and others deceived by the Polish government, which illegally refuses all of them to compensate for the loss of property in Poland. ”

Radio Liberty correspondent Karl Shrek contacted Vanessa von Kolpinski, a researcher at the London Register of Lost Art, a commercial firm that tracks lost and stolen cultural artifacts. According to her, in Poland, during the occupation by the Nazis, about 516 thousands of cultural valuables were stolen, and this country is considered the most affected in the industry. cultural values ​​during the Second World War.

For the Red Army, the seizure of cultural property in the conquered territories was perceived as legal compensation for the misfortunes and misfortunes caused by Hitler's Germany to Stalin’s Soviet Union.