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MONACO

Monaco poor box thief caught red-handed

In Monaco, home to the super-rich on the French Riviera, a worker at the cathedral was caught literally red-handed stealing from the poor box.

Monaco poor box thief caught red-handed
StockImage/Depositphotos

In early 2016, a newly arrived priest at the cathedral started to suspect the sexton of pilfering after noticing a drop in collection money.

The priest alerted the police, who put a trap in the box which would spray red paint on anyone trying to break in.

The sexton confessed after being caught with red marks on his hands.

The French resident of Cap d'Ail admitted that he had cut a second copy of the box's key before the priest had relieved him of the job of sorting the collection money.

In court this week, the defendant said he stole the money – an estimated €3,000 ($3500) – from the poor box to pay for his son's wedding.

The Monaco court gave the man a five-month suspended prison sentence and a €1,000 fine.

Saint Nicholas Cathedral collected €136,000 in 2016 and €145,000 in 2015, according to information gathered during the investigation.

MONACO

Billionaire owner of Monaco football club taken into custody

The Russian billionaire owner of Monaco football club was in custody Tuesday, his lawyer confirmed, the latest twist in his legal battle with a Swiss art dealer who he claims cheated him of up to one billion dollars and Sotheby's auctioneers.

Billionaire owner of Monaco football club taken into custody
Dmitry Rybolovlev. Photo: AFP

The Russian billionaire owner of Monaco football club was in custody Tuesday, his lawyer confirmed, the latest twist in his legal battle with a Swiss art dealer who he claims cheated him of up to one billion dollars and Sotheby's auctioneers.

Police officers also carried out a search Tuesday morning of Dmitry Rybolovlev's luxury penthouse apartment in the principality, said a source close to the case.

Rybolovlev's lawyer Herve Temine confirmed the latest developments, while stressing the principle of the presumption of innocence.

Temine's colleague Thomas Giaccardi said the latest move came after the seizure and analysis of a mobile phone belonging to one of Rybolovlev's lawyers, Tetiana Bersheda.

Since 2015, Rybolovlev has been locked in a legal battle with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, who he accuses of having swindled him out of up to a billion dollars, by charging inflated fees.

When Rybolovlev's lawyer Bersheda produced an audio recording from her mobile phone that she said supported his case, the investigating magistrate in the case ordered text messages from the same phone to be extracted.

That led to Monaco prosecutors opening a corruption investigation against Rybolovlev in 2017.

His legal team has repeatedly argued that this analysis of the phone was a violation of the lawyer-client confidentiality. That issue is still being fought out in court, but some of the compromising text messages have already been leaked to the French press.

On October 2 this year, Rybolovlev opened a new front in his legal battle, launching a $380-million (333-million-euros) lawsuit against Sotheby's auction house through the New York courts.

In it, he accused the auction house of having helped Bouvier, their art advisor, carry out “the largest art fraud in history” — at his expense.

Rybolovlev says Bouvier tricked him over the acquisition of 38 works of art he bought from him over a decade for more than $2.1 billion.

“He repeatedly and blatantly misrepresented the acquisition prices for the paintings,” pocketing the difference himself, says the lawsuit.

Sotheby's has dismissed the lawsuit as “entirely without merit”.

In November 2017, it filed its own lawsuit against Rybolovlev in Switzerland and is seeking to have the action in New York dismissed.

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