A Chinese librarian who stole 143 artworks from his own gallery replaced them with his own fakes, he told a court — only to find his works being substituted by other fraudsters.
For nearly eight years, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts chief librarian Xiao Yuan (蕭元) substituted paintings and calligraphies with his own art and sold the originals, making almost 35 million yuan (US$5.6 million), the court heard.
Works by 20th century painter Qi Baishi — whose Ode to the Motherland fetched 72 million yuan at a Beijing auction in 2012 and is considered one of the world’s highest-valued artists — were among those removed by Xiao.
Xiao also replaced Rock and Birds by 17th-century painter Zhu Da, which was valued at 30 million yuan, the Information Times newspaper reported yesterday.
The fraudster sold 125 of the paintings at auction, while another 18 works in his collection seized by police were valued at about 77 million yuan, prosecutors said.
However, 57-year-old Xiao told the court that other people were doing the same thing.
“During the investigation, when the police showed me a picture of my copies, I realized that 10 years earlier someone had replaced it with their own copy, because their work was very poor,” he said in footage of Tuesday’s hearing posted online by the Guangzhou People’s Intermediate Court.
“I could see it wasn’t my own work, the standard was too bad,” he added.
A spokesman at the Beijing branch of China Guardian Auctions confirmed that Xiao was one of its clients, but said it was “still verifying the details related to his case.”
Police have previously closed museums in China for displaying fake exhibits.
The Lucheng Museum in northeastern Liaoning Province was closed last year after almost a third of the 8,000 items on display were discovered to be not genuine, state media said.
In 2013, a museum in central Henan Province was found to have scores of fake exhibits, including a vase decorated with cartoon characters, but described as a Qing Dynasty artifact.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS