We're sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /home/Scandal-Inspired-Office-Ideas-Video-34114547 on this server. An invalid request was received from your browser. This may be caused by a malfunctioning proxy server or browser privacy software. Your technical support key is: 36b3-62f6-1756-6707 You can use this key to fix this problem yourself. If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.Passion will keep you going when the going gets tough.A suite of four Louis XVI gilt-walnut armchairs stamped by Louis Delanois that sold at Christie's Paris in 2015. An alleged antique forgery scandal at Versailles has led to the arrest of antiques dealers Laurent Kraemer, head of Paris’s venerable Kraemer Gallery, founded in 1875, and chair specialist Bill Pallot, reports the Telegraph. The French art fraud office, the Office Central de Lutte Contre le Trafic des Biens Culturels (OCBC), has been investigating the pair since 2012, on a tip from another French antiques dealer, Charles Hooreman, a expert in 18th-century chairs.
The Kraemers have been mainstays in the antiques dealing business for generations, with a 2007 Forbes profile on the gallery noting that “many 18th-century pieces in the Louvre, the Metropolitan and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts have passed through the hands of one Kraemer or another.” Part and parcel of that business was secrecy: “Kraemer is over-the-top discreet; one is always being reminded that one is never supposed to talk about the things one buys,” a longtime client told Forbes. Kraemer and Pallot sold Versailles a set of four medallion back chairs in 2009, claiming they were Louis Delanois originals. Investigators now suspect at least two of the chairs, purchased for €1.7 million ($1.9 million) may be copies. On a page detailing recent acquisitions, Versailles explained that the chairs are “National Treasures” and were among a group of 13 created for the Palace living room in 1769, where they belonged to countess du Barry, Louis XV’s last mistress.
Over the last 20 years, Versailles has bought back 10 of the original set of chairs, plus one known 19th-century copy. However, Hooreman came to suspect there were too many reported chairs in the set floating around for some to not be fakes, as there should be 12 extant chairs. (Louis XV’s personal chair, which was slightly larger, is thought to be lost.) “Versailles has 10, [a] Swiss collector two, and I know another that is impeccable belonging to a Parisian collector,” he told Le Monde. Hooreman has examined Kraemer’s chairs, and claims to see evidence they were made more recently. Because furniture-making techniques underwent few changes up until World War II, said one antique furniture restorer to Le Monde, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate true antiques from more recently-built pieces and outright forgeries. The Kraemer Gallery is adamant that he sold the Palace the genuine article. “The Kraemer Gallery has never produced any kind of fake furniture of any sort,” a gallery representative assured artnet News in a phone conversation.
“We have never have sold something we had doubts on.” If the chairs do prove to be copies, he added, “of course we are victims… we considered them to be authentic, like the French authorities.” In a press release translated by artnet News, Versailles noted that it was following the case “with the greatest attention” and “reserves the right to take legal action.” Follow artnet News on Facebook. The Congressional Post Office scandal refers to the discovery of corruption among various Congressional Post Office employees and members of the United States House of Representatives, investigated 1991–95, climaxing in House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) pleading guilty in 1996 to reduced charges of mail fraud. Initially an investigation by the United States Capitol Police into a single embezzlement charge against a single employee, evidence rapidly led to the inclusion of several other employees, before top Democrats in the House of Representatives moved to shut down the whole line of inquiry, despite protests from Frank Kerrigan, chief of the Capitol Police.
A new investigation was started by the United States Postal Service, which eventually submitted a report to Congress. This was held by Speaker Thomas Foley (D-WA) until media reports of embezzlement and money laundering leaked out in 1992. Following public outcry, Democratic leaders of the House were forced to refer the matter to the Committee on House Administration, which started its own investigation. That committee broke into two parts along party lines, the Democrats issuing a report saying the matter was closed, but the Republicans issuing a dissenting report, including a number of unanswered questions and problems with the investigation. The Republican charges were largely ignored until July 1993, when the Congressional Postmaster Robert Rota pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, implicating Representatives Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL), Joe Kolter (D-PA) and his then Chief of Staff. They were accused of heading a conspiracy to launder Post Office money through stamps and postal vouchers.
Rostenkowski pleaded guilty in 1996 to mail fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. U.S. President Bill Clinton pardoned Rostenkowski in 2000. The Nova Scotia Parliamentary Expenses Scandal is a political scandal in the province of Nova Scotia that was revealed in 2010. Part-way through the first session of the 61st General Assembly, the NDP, under Premier Darrell Dexter, announced that it would "eliminate an MLA severance payment as well as their ability to sell their office furniture and equipment."[1] According to a report by the CBC, the severance package alone was costing the province $600,000 after the results of the last election.[1] The province did not want MLAs who resign or are defeated to profit from selling their office furniture, and wanted the furniture to become provincial property when the MLA was done with it. The report viewed this as the first step in changing the rules regarding expenses of Nova Scotia MLAs. The situation truly began on February 3, 2010, when Jacques Lapointe, Nova Scotia's auditor general, released a 142-page report suggesting that "several politicians had filed 'excessive and unreasonable' claims, in part because of inadequate spending controls."
[2] According to the CBC, "MLAs in the Nova Scotia Legislature are entitled to spend $45,000/year in payments that require no receipts.[2] While Lapointe did not name any MLAs in his report, and said that no one had violated the law currently in place, all three parties in the Nova Scotia legislature were blamed for reckless spending, and announced his hope that more attention would be focused on repairing the expenses system rather than on demonizing legislators. In the wake of the Auditor General's report, Speaker Charlie Parker compiled a full list of "questionable expenses", which was made public on February 8. On February 9, 2010, the first political casualty of the scandal occurred when Richard Hurlburt, Progressive Conservative MLA for Yarmouth, resigned days after the Auditor General's report had shown he had spent about $8,000 on a generator, for his home. The Speaker's list of expenses also showed that Hurlburt had "bought a 42-inch television worth $2,499, which he paid $579 to have installed" in his constituency office in Yarmouth.
On March 12, 2010, Dave Wilson, MLA for Glace Bay, unexpectedly resigned. It was later revealed by the CBC that the Auditor General had requested a meeting on February 24, with Wilson to discuss his expenses.[6] On February 27, Wilson hired a lawyer, and did not go to the auditor general's meeting.[6] Wilson was originally mentioned in the Auditor general's report for spending $400 on patio furniture.[6] When the opposition parties released figures on how much their MLAs had spent in regards to pay for employees of their constituency office, it was shown that Wilson had spent the largest amount, paying one staffer $24,000 extra over an 18-month period, and $37,000 to others over a three-year period. On February 14, 2011, after an eight-month investigation, Hurlburt, Wilson, NDP turned Independent MLA Trevor Zinck and former Liberal cabinet minister Russell MacKinnon were all charged with fraud of over $5,000 and breach of trust by a public officer. Zinck was charged with two counts of theft of over $5,000, and Hurlburt, Wilson and MacKinnon were charged with uttering a forged document.