Guilty: Lawyer who hid stolen art for 30 years

Robert Mardirosian was handed loot by client who had just burgled
Massachusetts collector


Martha Lufkin | 25.9.08 | - The Art Newspaper


BOSTON. A retired Massachusetts lawyer who tried to sell seven stolen
pictures worth $30m, which a client had left with him shortly before
being shot dead, will be sentenced in November. In August, a federal
jury in Boston found Robert Mardirosian guilty of knowingly possessing
stolen goods that had crossed a United States boundary. The 1978 theft
from collector Michael Bakwin was the largest home burglary in
Massachusetts history. Mardirosian, 72, now faces a maximum sentence of
ten years in prison plus three years of supervised release, and a
$250,000 fine. The stolen works included Cézanne’s painting Bouilloire
et Fruits, 1888-1890.


Mardirosian had secretly held the art in Massachusetts after receiving
it shortly after the theft, but in 1988 moved it out of the US and
eventually to a Swiss bank.





In his efforts to profit from the paintings, he demanded a finder’s fee
of $1m, but kept his possession of the art secret by working in London
and Switzerland through lawyers and a Panamanian shell company, Erie
International Trading Co (Erie). When he attempted to move the stolen
paintings to London for sale, an investigation by the Art Loss Register
(ALR), the stolen art database, identified the theft.





The Cézanne, which was returned to Mr Bakwin first, was sold at
Sotheby’s in London for $29.3m in December 1999. The remaining six works
were also recovered. The case was investigated by the FBI with
assistance from the ALR.