Moscow – A Swiss businessman’s dogged, 14-year campaign to collect a debt from Russia ensnared, briefly, another unlikely government asset: 54 French paintings from the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow that had been on display in Switzerland.
The paintings – including works by such masters as Poussin, Manet, Renoir and Cezanne, and insured for more than $1 billion – were seized by the Swiss police late Tuesday night as the collection was being boxed up after a five-month exhibition at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny.
The authorities in the Canton Valais acted on a court order sought by Nessim Gaon, whose relentless legal assault on Russian assets abroad has previously been denounced in Russia as “financial terrorism” and was vilified again Wednesday.
This is a man, after all, who once filed suit to seize President Vladimir Putin’s personal jet. (The French government had to intervene.)
Gaon’s latest effort ended as the others have – with a burst of publicity, followed by failure.
By Wednesday night, Switzerland’s Federal Council invoked a national-security clause of the constitution to overrule the cantonal court.
Gaon was not available to comment, an assistant said, but his company, NOGA, released a pointed statement.
“NOGA was compelled to resort to this seizure of important works of art as a result of the inequitable battle it has had to fight for 14 years against a world power – the world’s second largest exporter of oil – that continues not to respect its obligations and, through this behavior, to harm its image as a lawful state,” the statement said.
“Such a method of resolving commercial disputes is uncivilized,” the Pushkin’s chief curator, Zinaida A. Bonamie, said in a telephone interview.
Gaon’s grievance dates to 1991, when NOGA negotiated contracts to provide loans to what was still the Soviet Union, which agreed to pay in oil. The contracts continued with the new Russian government, but the company soon accused the Russians of failing to pay – a not uncommon occurrence in the economic and political turmoil of the 1990s.