[MSN] As Toronto sees valuable artworks go missing, lawyer Bonnie Czegledi is the city's ambassador to Interpol and the FBI -- and the nearest thing it has to an art cop

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Art thieves, look out
As Toronto sees valuable artworks go missing, lawyer Bonnie Czegledi is the
city's ambassador to Interpol and the FBI -- and the nearest thing it has to
an art cop

JOSHUA KNELMAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

In a crowd of black turtlenecks, the Toronto Police detectives were easy to
pick out. Sitting near the back of a hall at the Royal Ontario Museum in
November, they looked straight out of NYPD Blue, with crisp suits, buzz cuts
and wide builds. At the podium, art lawyer Bonnie Czegledi was delivering
bad news: Stealing art and antiquities has exploded into an $8-billion black
market. "Canada is a fantastic place to steal art," she added, "because no
one is paying attention."

The presence of the two lawmen, though, was a victory for Ms. Czegledi, who
is committed to fighting art theft in Toronto, the capital of the Canadian
art market. Since she opened her law practice in the Annex four years ago,
she has become an unofficial ambassador in the global field of art crime,
funnelling information from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and
Interpol. She is also the closest thing Toronto has to an art cop; when the
Ontario College of Art & Design was robbed of a painting this month, it
turned to Ms. Czegledi for help.

Ms. Czegledi is unique in the visual-arts community: A lawyer and artist
whose chambers also double as an art gallery, she is an enthusiastic
supporter of contemporary artists -- but she is not afraid to offer scathing
criticism of a local art trade she views as a haven for thieves and
obsessive collectors. "Local police don't have a checklist on what to do
when a gallery is robbed," Ms. Czegledi says. "I do."

That's why OCAD called her about the theft of a landscape painting by J.W.
Beatty, a contemporary of the Group of Seven. The first question she says
she asked was whether the college had registered the missing painting with
the Art Loss Register, a database of stolen artwork searched by police the
world over. OCAD had not. It's a common mistake, according to Ms. Czegledi.
"The police won't tell them to do it," she says. "The victim has to take
responsibility. When a stolen painting is well publicized, it's more
difficult for thieves to sell on the international black market."

The Beatty work is worth about $25,000 -- a relatively small number in the
multibillion-dollar art business -- but Ms. Czegledi doesn't take any such
loss in stride. "The painting has historical and emotional value," she says
passionately. "It is worth more than the money itself."

Ms. Czegledi's passion about the subject goes back a long way. Although she
was raised in Don Mills, her ancestors hailed from the Carpathian Mountains
in what was once Hungary (now Romania), their Szekely tribe destroyed by
what Ms. Czegledi calls ethnic cleansing -- their cultural heritage erased.
As a girl, Ms. Czegledi hid her paintings from a disapproving mother who
encouraged a sensible career in law. At Osgoode Hall, she specialized in
cultural heritage so she could "live a life amongst the pretty paintings,"
she says. But she soon discovered an underbelly to the art world, and a
police force unprepared.

In Toronto, Ms. Czegledi says, there are no police trained in art
investigations. "The Toronto police force doesn't have much knowledge, but
they do have a willingness to learn," she said. "Detectives don't know where
this stuff goes, or who the collectors are."

And art crime in Toronto is growing. Thefts from private residences (often
unreported) are difficult to track, but Ms. Czegledi says more than a dozen
local galleries have been robbed in the past few years.

Dealer Tarah Aylward of Ingram Gallery -- which was robbed three times in
2002 and 2003 -- echoes Ms. Czegledi's call for an art-crime detective. "The
police offered me no advice about getting my stolen sculptures back," Ms.
Aylward says. "They basically said, 'Good luck, you'll probably never see
them again, and we can't help you.' "

To shine a spotlight on the illicit trade, Ms. Czegledi hosted a lecture in
November at the ROM featuring the Art Loss Register's Kathryn Dugdale. Based
in London and New York, the organization's databases now contain more than
160,000 files on stolen art from across the globe, but very few from
Toronto. "Since our lecture, Canadians have started calling us," Ms. Dugdale
says. "They usually say, 'We've just spoken with Bonnie Czegledi.' "

Ms. Dugdale says no Toronto auction houses subscribe to the Art Loss
Register, which indicates they are not conducting due diligence searches on
the art they sell. "When art is stolen, small auction houses are one place
where it is laundered," Ms. Czegledi explains. "In France, there's a book
that's bigger than the Bible filled with rules for auctions. In Canada, you
know how big our book is? Well, there is no book. There are no agreed-upon
guidelines or laws."

It was at Ms. Dugdale's lecture that the two Toronto detectives showed up.
Detective David Alexander of 51 Division confirms that he is consulting Ms.
Czegledi on the robbery last year of a house in Cabbagetown, where about 60
paintings -- worth an estimated $4-million -- vanished one winter night.
"We've been talking on a regular basis," Det. Alexander says of Ms.
Czegledi. "She's a great resource and has her finger on the pulse of that
community. For us, it's hard to know how much a painting is worth and who
the players are. She can put that into perspective." Still, the detective
said of his case, "We're stalled."

Ms. Czegledi's point to interested officers is that "to investigate art
crime they must have more than a superficial understanding of the art world.
They have to know which auction houses are selling it, under what
circumstances, and who is collecting it. They have to get inside it."

This is especially important, she says, because many thefts are specifically
commissioned. "My gut feeling is that the message is sent out from a
collector, saying what that collector wants, and then it gets stolen.
Thieves . . . won't steal something that they won't get money for."

A collector, she explained, might stop caring about the consequences and do
anything to possess a beautiful object. "They can be compared to stalkers --
often feeling a sense of entitlement and of being above the law. They
believe that they will not be caught." And with no detectives in Toronto
familiar with the gallery scene, she fears this will remain the standard.

In an upcoming series of public lectures at the ROM, starting tomorrow, the
lawyer will cover an array of shady dealings, including fakes and forgeries,
Holocaust-looted art, and the pillaging of Iraq's antiquities, including
their flow to Toronto. She will also provide tips about how to avoid buying
stolen art.

At the ROM, Ms. Czegledi will also deliver her most important edict:
Stealing art is not a victimless crime. "We're all victims because we can't
see Vermeer's The Concert, or any of the hundred thousand paintings still
missing from the Holocaust," she says. "Culture is the soul of a people, and
to steal it is the final way to destroy a civilization."

A growing awareness of art crimes will probably mean that at least a few
officers and lawyers will be present to learn from Ms. Czegledi about what's
not hanging on our gallery walls. And as usual, she will keep a close eye on
her audience. "Criminals attend my lectures as well," she said. "Because
they need to know what I know."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/