Nine people tried for international Giacometti furniture trafficking
Nine defendants are appearing in Alès on charges of selling €630,000 worth of furniture signed by Giacometti, which was subsequently resold for more than €2 million. The case raises questions about the authenticity of the pieces.
Trial of luxury furniture trafficking in Alès
Nine defendants appeared on Friday 16 October 2026 before the Alès district court, prosecuted for organised fraud, money laundering and undeclared work. According to Midi Libre, they are implicated in a vast international trafficking operation in art furniture, including pieces signed by Giacometti and attributed to Picasso.
The investigation has revealed a systematic resale scheme. Residents of Alès disposed of €630,000 worth of luxury furniture to Parisian galleries and through Christie's auction house. These same pieces subsequently passed through several countries — the United Kingdom, Italy, Hong Kong, the United States, Brazil — before reaching a total value of nearly €2 million.
Investigators, led by Alès's research brigade and the regional intervention group (GIR), detected the scheme in 2016 following reports from the financial intelligence service Tracfin regarding transfers of significant sums made by individuals declaring little or no income. A raid in January 2017 led to the arrest of a dozen suspects in several departments in southern France.
Pieces of contested authenticity
Contrary to what a first reading might suggest, the case concerns not thefts of artworks but solely the sale and purchase of furniture whose authenticity remains disputed. A pair of chairs attributed to Picasso was thus proposed to Christie's for €100,000, before passing through the United Kingdom and reappearing without the prices or exact circuits being documented.
Armchairs known as "lioness heads" and a pair of "Picasso" chairs rejected by Christie's — following an expert opinion declaring the furniture inauthentic — nevertheless became the subject of a transaction in 2014 between the defendants and a Parisian gallerist who was also an expert, for €190,000. This professional resold them for €230,000. A third buyer subsequently made almost triple the profit, selling the pair of chairs in Hong Kong for €250,000 and the armchairs in Los Angeles for €390,000.
Unanswered questions
The case of a large octagonal table with caryatids, sold in Italy for €700,000, exemplifies the opacity of the file. Comparable tables have achieved considerably higher prices: a similar table from the Givenchy collection was part of a lot of three, sold for €11.2 million in 2017, whilst a Brazilian collector had acquired one for €3.6 million in 2005. Investigators wonder why a reputed professional working internationally would have ceded such a work at a disproportionate price — perhaps, they suggest, because he suspected its inauthenticity.
On the defendants' bench are residents of popular districts in Alès, several antique dealers, a company manager and various intermediaries. No representative from major Parisian galleries or from Christie's was assigned to appear, an absence that raises questions among defence lawyers.
Investigators regard the practices of the gallerists and experts "at best troubling", particularly in cases where the same individual holds both a gallery and an expert activity. Although the lawyer for Giacometti's heirs refrained from opposing the sale by Christie's of a pair of "lioness heads" armchairs — whilst expressing surprise at the "considerable number" of such armchairs marketed in recent years — the question of authenticity remains central to the case.
The investigation, which was particularly lengthy, did not seek the support of the Central Office for the Fight Against Cultural Property Trafficking (OCBC), an absence that several observers regret. A civil party has been constituted in the case. Friday's hearing should make it possible to clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of the protagonists, but other elements of the circuit remain opaque.
Source: Google News FR — Crime (fr)