The Medici Conspiracy

by Peter Watson

  The Greek Ministry’s logic was not enough. On June 10, 1993, the Getty formally acquired the wreath, for $1,150,000 (paid to Christoph Leon), and the Kore, for $3,300,000 (paid to Robin Symes). In the curator’s report, prepared for the proposed acquisitions, under the heading referring to provenance, it was written that “the dealer will provide the standard warranties concerning title, export, and import in accordance with the antiquities acquisition policy of the J. P. Getty Museum.” Leon was listed as the seller, the previous owner as a “Swiss Collector,” and Switzerland was shown as the country of origin. In the warranty it was specifically stated by Leon that “the object was legally exported from its country of origin.”

  The Getty must have thought it was home-free—nothing happened for four years. Then, toward the end of 1997, Greek Interpol received, from the German police, a file of documents which showed that Greek looters—immigrant workers in Germany—had smuggled the gold wreath out of Greece into Germany and had contacted True and Leon through Athanassios Seliachas (the painter), a permanent Greek resident in Munich. The documents included a signed affidavit that Seliachas had made to the German authorities.

  Early in the new year, 1998, the Greek Art Squad asked the Ministry of Culture for help in following up the investigation but the culture ministry vetoed the initiative, confirming in a confidential memorandum (I have a copy of it) that it was then engaged in diplomatic moves with the Getty aimed at securing the return of the wreath. So the police were stood down. The so-called diplomatic initiative, however, never went anywhere and, after a few years, ran into the sand. Diplomacy was tried anew every so often but, by 2005, the wreath and the kore were still in Los Angeles.

  In October of that year, an officer of the Greek police, now retired, gave me copies of a set of documents with Seliachas’ testimony and the golden wreath case file. Using these documents as a basis, I published a story on the wreath in Epsilon magazine.

  Meanwhile, without my knowing it, there was a new special prosecutor in the headquarters of the Athens magistrates who read the article and decided to investigate the case. This man, Ioannis Diotis, was in many ways a parallel figure to Paolo Ferri in Italy. He had worked on some very tough cases. In particular, he had served many years in the antiterrorist department and was the man responsible for solving the case of the radical, leftist Greek terrorist group, “November 17,” or “17N,” as it was known. (The last victim of “17N” was Brigadier Stephen Saunders, defense attaché at the British Embassy in Athens, shot dead on his way to work in June 2000.)

  Diotis, fifty-two years old, with a thick gray moustache and a strong voice, was an admirer of Giovanni Falcone, the Sicilian magistrate who was blown up by the mafia in 1992. Diotis began to look into the case of the golden wreath and it was he who realized that the Greek situation paralleled to an extent the situation in Italy—which was making news just then because, a few months before, in May 2005, the verdict against Medici was handed down. Diotis’s office was on the second floor of a hundred-year-old neo-classical building inside the compound of the Athens law courts. He began burning the midnight oil, catching up with all the documents that the Greek art squad had amassed in their files.

  His first move was to meet Ferri. He and Gligoris traveled to Rome together in January 2006. For four hours they compared notes and exchanged information—about True, Hecht, Medici, Symes, and Christo Michaelides. And they decided to move forward on a cooperative basis. Two months later Gligoris decided to raid Marion True’s house at Glyssidia on Paros, in which those eighteen antiquities were found and confiscated. But that is not all they found.

  The Greek police are old-fashioned. They rely very little on the surveillance technology the Italians use so much, but get most of their information from “sources” and tip-offs. And, during their raid on Paros, they were approached by a local informer who had something interesting to say about a nearby island and a family who had a vacation home there. The island was called Schinoussa and the family were the Papadimitrious. The informer said he had seen many antiquities “scattered around the yard” of the Papdimitirous’ house.

  Back in Athens, after “Operation Eclipse,” Gligoris moved swiftly. His first move was to check whether any of the Papadimitriou family was legally registered as a collector of antiquities. They were not. So it seemed to Gligoris that a visit to the island might be timely.

  It is a six-hour crossing from Piraeus—the port of Athens—to Schinoussa, and the Aegean Sea can be rough. In early April 2006, when Gligoris took his squad to mount the island raid, the sea was as bad as ever, a furious wind sweeping across the deck of the boat like a demon. Most of the men were anxious, preoccupied. One officer usually responsible for naming operations remarked on the wind that was blowing. “Just as the wind is blowing now, Aeolos [the Greek god of the wind] is gonna blow on Schinoussa. If anything is hidden there, it will be blown clear into the open.” Thus was born “Operation Aeolos,” on April 12, 2006.

  By late morning, Gligoris and his men had reached the Saint Basil area of Schinoussa, an enormous private peninsula owned by the Papadimitriou /Michaelides family. At the gate, they informed the watchman that they were there to search the premises. They had with them a local prosecutor and an archaeologist. Before the watchman would admit them through the gate, he insisted on calling Dimitri Papadimitriou, son of Despina and nephew of Christo Michaelides, who was now head of the ship-owning family. The watchman gave the phone to Gligoris, who explained what was happening.

  “Captain, do your duty,” said Papadimitriou.

  The family compound was a narrow peninsula, with the sea visible on both sides. The road passed through an olive grove, then vineyards and storehouses, before the main house was reached. This house, facing south-east to avoid the wind, was a low-built construction, with a central courtyard embraced by the house on three sides, and containing an atrium and a swimming pool. The house had multicolored marble floors set into geometric patterns, not too dissimilar from the floors of the Getty Museum in Malibu. The passageways were set with cobblestone mosaics, winding between water fountains and earthen flasks full of flowers. The side facing the sea was dominated by a colonnade in the Roman villa style.

  Scattered around the yard and the atrium, Gligoris and his men noticed dozens of antiquities. There were sphinxes, capitals of pillars, Byzantine tiles, an ancient metal anchor, columns, Roman fountains, Islamic mosaics, and marble lions from Roman times supporting a table made from a slab of Byzantine paving stone. Replicas of ancient sofas and other furniture were set alongside fountains hewn out of the natural bedrock.

  Gligoris telephoned his superiors in Athens to report these early discoveries and to request back-up. Then he made another call and activated a second team he had standing by, back at headquarters. He ordered that this second team immediately proceed to search the residence of Despina Papadimitriou in the affluent Athens suburb of Psychico.

  The search in Schinoussa took a week. Wherever they looked, they found antiquities—all of them unregistered. Outside the flower house stood two large Egyptian sphinxes made of pink granite. In the basement storeroom of the main house, in front of an array of metal shelves—on which were stored pillows and curtains, baskets and tools—stood a kneeling Venus, a copy of an original by Praxitiles. This Venus had known better times. She had once been exhibited at the Getty (she was featured in the Getty Museum Journal) but for reasons unknown had returned to the ownership of Christo and been forgotten. Next to the Venus was a marble face mask, ceiling panels from a Byzantine temple, two small lions, fountains, and architectural fragments from the Roman period. In another basement room, among huge refrigerators and deep-freezers—stacked on a shelf alongside candlesticks and Christmas decorations—were fragments of ancient pottery and a prehistoric obsidian stone blade.

  Outside the front entrance to the villa, stacked on wooden pallets, fragments of a seventeenth-century French chapel were found. On the southern tip of the peninsula there was a chapel dedic
ated to Saint Basil and this too surprised the police and archaeologists. It had been built recently and was almost entirely made up of architectural segments originating from other Byzantine temples. There were bas-relief stone panels, columns, elaborate lintels, capitals, and Byzantine paving and stone masonry acquired from all over the Mediterranean.

  Immediately behind, and close by the chapel, was a small grove where the remains of Christo were resting peacefully, next to those of his father, Alexander Votsi Michaelides.

  Even the caretaker of the house was found to possess four ancient amphorae fished out of the sea, in his home in the village.

  At the same time, in Athens, in Despina Papadimitriou’s house in Psychico, Gligoris’ second squad were discovering fourteen antiquities, all unregistered. Among them were nine very rare and perfectly restored pieces of Coptic weaving from the fourth-to-sixth centuries, from Egypt, two Mycenean amphorae, a marble head, and a ceramic idol with elephant feet, which the archaeologists rated as very rare, even unique.

  In Schinoussa and Psychico, a total of approximately 300 ancient artworks had been discovered, all of which fell under Greek antiquities law. They had a combined value, according to the ministry of Culture, of 980,000 Euros ($1,120,000/£725,000).

  The last day of the search on Schinoussa had arrived. Everyone was exhausted after nearly a week of non-stop searching. The police had, they thought, searched everywhere, including the chapel, the flower house, the pigeon house, and three private beaches. They were planning to leave in the afternoon for Athens when one of the crew entered an ironing room in a small storeroom, next to the entrance of the main villa and the caretaker’s quarters. On both sides were shelves packed with towels, bed linen and blankets. On the last shelf, meticulously wrapped in bed sheets, four large Byzantine frescoes were found. They were restored but still bore signs of violent removal from a religious monument. Inside a cupboard, between boxes of cutlery, they next came across three cardboard cartons containing hundreds of photographs and some photo albums with imitation leather binding.

  At first glance, all the photos depicted extremely valuable antiquities of rare beauty. In another cupboard they also found many scarlet-colored albums with personal photographs of Christo and Symes, making excursions in the Cyclades and showing details of their private life on Schinoussa. Then there were snapshots of excursions made to archaeological sites abroad—Petra, in Jordan, was easily identifiable.

  Gligoris looked through the personal photographs, but did not confiscate them. He did, however, take the photographs depicting antiquities. Such was the quality that everybody in his team was under the impression that these photos portrayed artifacts from museums or private collections gathered by Christo and Symes in order to study them. The junior police officers, impatient to get back to Athens, intended to file the albums simply as a “stack of photographs.” At that point, however, a more experienced officer, Dimitri Pitikakis, intervened. He insisted all the photographs be numbered on the spot and signed off. Thanks to him, what would have been a serious blunder was avoided.

  Operation Aeolos brought havoc to the small island of Schinoussa. The three hundred residents were furious that the bad publicity, coming in spring, would have a negative effect on that summer’s tourist trade. Those fears dispersed later in the year when three times the number of usual visitors turned up. But in the first days, with the investigation in full swing, tensions mounted: it was a small, closed community where nothing was kept secret or left without comment.

  In the village coffee shop the islanders were divided on the matter, since the Michaelides/Papadimitriou family had bestowed many charities on the local church, the elderly, and the island’s school. And they all agreed on one thing: the late Christo Michaelides was “the best lad” in the land. Gentle, polite, and refined, always helpful without making a show of it, he simply loved Schinoussa, and was loved in return by its inhabitants. Christo made a habit of spending his summers on Schinoussa, in the company of Robin Symes. Yet for Symes, there was not a good word from anyone.

  The locals remember dozens of Greek celebrities who visited the island, although many foreign visitors and guests arrive anonymously in private yachts. However, the photo albums of Schinoussa portrayed the social entourage of Symes and Christos. Among others, there were dozens of photos of the marriage ceremony from Marion True’s wedding in Paros town hall, with the director of the Benaki Museum, Angelos Delivorrias, acting as best man. He remained a close friend for many years and bravely stood up for her after her forced retirement from the Getty. True, with the same dress from the wedding, the bridegroom, and Symes also appeared in the villa on Schinoussa, while other photos show the local archaeologist of Paros, Yannis Kouragios, another close friend of Marion True, carrying a bird in a cage next to Symes. Another shot showed Symes with an assistant operating a large pneumatic drill at work on the base of an ancient capital, later to be found incorporated into the architectural ornament of Saint Basil’s chapel.

  Yet the most revealing were the photos from the dinner parties on Paros and Schinoussa with Christo, Robin, the collectors Shelby White and Leon Levy, the founder of the museum of ancient cycladic art in Athens, Dolly Goulandris, and many other guests present, mostly Greek and foreign archeologists.

  It is something of an overstatement, often heard coming from some Greek officials, that Symes and Michaelides used Schinoussa as a base for trafficking looted antiquities. None of the witnesses interviewed by Gligoris on the island testified to anything like that. On the contrary, the villa on Schinoussa appears to have been used for the preparation and closing of deals, with important museum curators and private collectors in an idyllic setting. On the small and beautiful Cycladic island, in this huge, luxurious villa, antiquarians, museum directors, collectors, conservationists, scholars, and personalities of the economic and intellectual elite met with top dealers to discuss new deals, acquisitions, and purchases surrounded inevitably by the endless gossip of the world of art.

  Christo, according to all existing reports, never appeared in person to market antiquities that originated directly from Greece. These were obtained usually from Italian middlemen such as Giacomo Medici, Gianfranco Becchina, and Nino Savoca. Officers of the Art Squad say they know, through experience, that illegally excavated Greek antiquities usually depart in trucks or commercial containers by road through one of two main routes. The northern route stretches through provinces that were previously parts of Yugoslavia and leads to Munich. This destination is reached often by antiquities originating from Crete, due to the large export of fruit and vegetables to local European markets. According to Greek police, the German route is used basically by smugglers from northern Greece. Every family in every village has a relative or friend that is an immigrant in Germany. Smugglers often use these connections in order to find a buyer and often undertake the task of exporting the artifacts themselves. These operations are usually small scale, confined to people from the same family.

  The western route goes through Italy. Trucks cross over on ferries practically without any customs control due to the European common market. They end up in Switzerland, usually in the freeport of Geneva. The Italian route is more professional. Two or three Italian dealers with shady connections purchase looted antiquities from Greece on a big scale and undertake delivery including the illegal exportation. They have middlemen in Greece and decide the purchases through photographs. The Greek looter sends the photos, usually Polaroid, to Italy by post to the dealer. He in turn makes arrangements for delivery and places payment into a bank account drawn up in the name of the smuggler. The only time they are in danger of being exposed is while they are moving the artifacts. However, in a Europe without borders, who could possibly search millions of cargo shipments crossing over countries each year? Ancient artifacts furthermore are not like narcotics to be detected by trained dogs, or like illegal immigrants to be discovered through the use of biodetectors.

  Back in Athens, late at night, as a member of
the team that searched Schinoussa mentioned the story of how the photo albums were discovered, he remarked:

  “They were bound in green-colored synthetic leather and the photos were of a professional standard, suitable even for publication.”

  “How many of them?” I asked.

  “Seventeen, I think.”

  I felt I had been hit by electricity. In a flash, I thought back to one of my meetings with Peter Watson in London in 2001, when I was investigating the international network smuggling Greek antiquities, for the documentary “The Network.” At that time Peter had mentioned a series of visits he had paid to the Papadimitriou lawyers’ offices at Lane and Partners, in Bloomsbury Square in London. There, he had seen part of the archive kept by Symes, then in the hands of the Greek family. And he had mentioned seventeen green-colored leather-bound photo albums that contained antiquities handled by Robin and Christo.

  The penny dropped. The photos from Schinoussa were probably exact copies of the original London file. If so, they were not photos showing objects in museums, for Symes and Christo to study, but were photos of their own objects, showing the most important antiquities to have passed through their business during the 1980s and 1990s, right up until the death of Christo in 1999. I also recalled that a spokesman for the Papadimitriou family, and also a couple of employees from the villa in Schinoussa, had claimed that shortly after Christo’s death, Robin Symes and an assistant had arrived at Schinoussa and, in the absence of the Papadimitriou family, destroyed files and inventories which were kept there. “For three days and three nights they were burning documents,” all three witnesses specifically reported.ao The albums, however, were apparently forgotten in the storeroom of Schinoussa and had escaped destruction. Whether copies or originals, accidentally or with the assistance of Aeolos, the Symes’ file of photos—that the Greeks and Italians, the prosecutors and archaeologists were so eagerly searching for—had landed in Gligoris’s lap.