The furniture fraud that hoodwinked the Palace of Versailles

In the early 2010s, two ornate chairs would formerly belonged to the field of the Palais de Versailles appeared on the French antiques market.

According to the most expensive chairs made for the last Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, they were stamped with the seal of Nicolas -Quinibert Foliot, a famous – or carpenter – who worked in Paris in the 1700s.

An important discovery, the couple was declared “national treasures” by the French government in 2013, at the request of Versailles.

The palace, which presents such items in its vast collection of museums, expressed interest in buying the chairs, but the price was deemed too expensive.

Rather, they were sold to Prince Qatari Mohammed Bin Hamad Al Thani for 2 million euros (1.67 million pounds sterling).

The chairs constituted a remarkable number of royal furniture from the 18th century which had appeared on the antiques market in recent years.

Other items included another set of chairs supposed to be seated in one of Marie Antoinette’s rooms in Versailles; A separate pair would have belonged to Madame du Barry, mistress of King Louis XV; King Louis XVI’s sister’s armchair, Princess Élisabeth; and a pair of spinning – or stools – who belonged to the daughter of King Louis XV, Princess Louise Élisabeth.

Most of them were bought by Versailles to exhibit in his collection of museums, while a chair was sold to the rich Guerrand-Hermès family.

But in 2016, this assortment of royal chairs would be involved in a national scandal that would shake the world of French antiquities, strengthening trade.

The reason? The chairs were in fact all false.

The scandal saw one of the main antiques in France in France, Georges “Bill” Pallot, and award -winning cabinetmaker, Bruno Desnoues, tried for fraud and money laundering after a nine -year investigation.

Galerie Kraemer and its director, Laurent Kraemer, were also accused of serious deception by serious negligence for having sold on certain chairs – something they both deny.

The three defendants should appear before a Pontoise court near Paris on Wednesday following a trial in March. Mr. Pallot and Mr. Desnoues admitted their crimes, while Mr. Kraemer and his gallery dispute the accusation of serious negligence deception.

Considered the best researcher on the French chairs of the 18th century, after having written the author authority on the subject, Mr. Pallot was often called by Versailles, among others, to give his expert the opinion of the question of whether historical articles were the real matter. He was even called as an expert witness in the French courts when there were doubts about the authenticity of an article.

His accomplice, Mr. Desnoues, was a decorated cabinetmaker and sculptor who had won a certain number of prestigious prices, including the best sculptor in France in 1984, and had been employed as the main restaurant of furniture at Versalles.

Speaking in court in March, Mr. Pallot said that the program started as a “joke” with Mr. Desnoues in 2007 to see if they could reproduce an armchair on which they were already working, belonging to Madame du Barry.

The masters of their profession, they managed the feat, convincing other experts, whether it was a chair of the period.

And supported by their success, they started to do more.

Describing how they made the construction of the chairs, the two described in court how Mr. Pallot caused wooden frames during various auctions at low prices, while Mr. Desnoues aged in wood in his workshop to make others.

They were then sent for gilding and padding, before Mr. Desnoues added drawings and a wooden finish. He added stamps from some of the large furniture of the 18th century, which were faked or taken from real furniture from the time.

Once finished, Mr. Pallot sold them through the intermediary to galleries like Kraemer and to which he worked himself, Didier Aaron. They would then be sold in auction houses such as Sotheby’s in London and Drouot de Paris.

“I was his head and Desnoues was my hands,” Pallot told court smiling.

“It happened like a breeze,” he added. “Everything was wrong but the money.”

Prosecutors allege that the two men made an estimated profit at more than 3 million euros in reduction on forged chairs – although Mr. Pallot and Mr. Desnoues estimated that their profits were less than € 700,000. The income has been filed in foreign bank accounts, prosecutors said.

The lawyers representing Versailles told the BBC that Mr. Pallot, lecturer at the Sorbonne, had succeeded in deceiving the institution because of his “privileged access to the documentation and the archives of Versailles and the Louvre museum as part of his academic research”.

A declaration by the lawyer of the lawyer Corinne Hershkovitch said that thanks to the “in -depth knowledge” of Mr. Pallot on the inventories of the royal furniture recorded as having existed in Versailles in the 18th century, he was able to determine which articles were missing from the collections and and then to do them with the help of Mr. Desnoues.

Mr. Desnoues also had access to the original chairs of which he had made copies, they added: “allowing him to produce counterfeits which had the visual appearance of an authentic, inventory numbers and time labels”.

“The fraudulent association between these two men accomplished professionally, recognized by their peers, made it possible to deceive the French institutions which considered them as partners and to betray their confidence, thus damaging the reputation of Versailles and its conservatives,” they said.

Prosecutor Pascal Rayer said that the trial has highlighted the need for more robust art market regulations, and also highlighted standards Antiquity dealers should respect.

The court heard that the authorities had been alerted to the program when the sumptuous lifestyle of a Portuguese and its partner drew the attention of the French authorities.

Questioned by the police on the acquisition of properties in France and in Portugal worth 1.2 million euros while on an income of around € 2,500 per month, the man – who, he turned out, worked as a chest man in Parisian galleries – admitted his role in work as an intermediary who collaborated in the fraud of the furniture, reported AFP News Agency. The Money Trail then led the investigators to Mr. Desnoues and Mr. Pallot.

Some of the people originally charged in the case, including intermediaries, were then dropped against them.

But the accusations against Laurent Kraemer and Galerie Kraemer, who sold on certain chairs forged to collectors such as Versailles and Prince Al-Thani of Qatar, were maintained.

Prosecutors allege that even if the gallery itself may have been due for buying the false pieces, Mr. Kraemer and the gallery were “roughly negligent” by not verifying the authenticity of the items enough before selling them to collectors at high prices.

In his fence arguments, the prosecutor, Mr. Rayer, said that on the basis of the reputation and Kraemer gallery contacts, they could have taken the furniture to Versailles or the Louvre to compare them.

“They could also have hired other experts given the amounts at stake and considering the opacity on the origin of the chairs.”

Speaking in court, a lawyer representing Mr. Kraemer and the gallery insisted that his client “is the victim of fraud, not an accomplice”, declaring that Mr. Kraemer had never had direct contact with the false.

In a statement to the BBC, lawyers Martin Reynaud and Mauricia Courégé added: “The gallery was not an accomplice of the counterfeiters, the gallery did not know that the furniture was false, and it could not have detected it”.

“Like the Palace of Versailles and the specialists who classified furniture as national treasures, the Kraemer gallery was the victim of the counterfeiters,” they added.

“We are waiting for judgment to recognize it.”

The BBC contacted Mr. Pallot’s lawyer to comment. The BBC could not reach Mr. Desnoues or his lawyer.