Gallery admits €5.5m art fraud

The owner and manager of a New York art gallery have admitted selling forgeries of paintings by artists such as Marc Chagall and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The pleas to conspiracy charges came yesterday in a case involving the sale of £3.8m (€5.5m) in forged paintings that were so intricately detailed they were almost indistinguishable from the originals.

Ely Sakhai, 52, owner of the Exclusive Art gallery in Manhattan, agreed to pay £6.9m (€10m) and to forfeit 11 paintings as part of a plea deal, according to court papers.

He also agreed to be sentenced to a prison term of between three and four years. Without the deal, he could have faced up to 20 years in jail.

He and Houshi Sandjaby, 70, the gallery’s office manager, admitted their roles in a scheme that spanned at least 15 years, the government said.

Sakhai and Sandjaby were accused of defrauding art buyers by selling them forgeries of paintings by master artists representing primarily the Impressionist, post-Impressionist and modern periods.

Prosecutors said that in one case a fake painting and the original landed at competing auction houses for sale in the same month.

The government said the defendants bought authentic paintings, then hired artists to copy them.

The paintings were doctored with special coatings to make them look decades old.

Sandjaby faces up to five years in prison. Sentences will be handed out on July 5.