A New Jersey millionaire and philanthropist who gained notoriety when questions were raised about the value of a collection of 17th- and 18th-century stringed instruments that he sold to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison on unrelated tax fraud charges.
The philanthropist, Herbert Axelrod, sobbed and expressed his remorse for helping a former executive of his pet supply and pet-related publishing company set up a Swiss bank account to hide taxable income from the Internal Revenue Service.
"It was always my goal to be remembered as an outstanding philanthropist," said Axelrod, 77, standing before Judge Garrett Brown in US District Court. "Instead I will be remembered as someone who disrespected the law and this court."
Last month the former executive, Gary Hersch, pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of taxes on some US$775,000 he secreted in a Swiss bank. The white-bearded Axelrod, who has been held in a Monmouth County jail and who wore an oversized, khaki-colored prison jumpsuit to court, admitted Monday that it was he who introduced Hersch to his Zurich banker in 1983, commencing the fraud.
Axelrod was arrested in June in Germany, where he had fled after hearing of the federal investigation into the tax case. He lived in Deal, New Jersey, for many years, and made his fortune with pet products and publications, founding TFH Publications.
Once called the Medici of the Meadowlands for his patronage of the arts, he was praised just a year earlier for his sale of 30 Stradivarius, Amati and Guaneri violins, violas and cellos to the orchestra. He and some experts had valued the collection at US$50 million, but the symphony was able to buy the collection for US$18 million.
It was seen at the time as a generous gift. However, other appraisals and an investigation by the trustees of the orchestra valued the instruments at between US$15 million and US$26 million at most.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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