Lyon (AFP)
The spouses Le Guennec were sentenced Tuesday in Lyon, and this for the third time, for the concealment of 271 works by Pablo Picasso, they said they had received as a gift and kept for nearly forty years in their garage.
The president of the court of appeal confirmed the judgment of the court of Grasse rendered in 2015 "in all respects on the guilt as on the sentence pronounced" against Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec, two years of prison with reprieve.
The 80-year-old craftsman and his wife, 76, were absent when the judgment was delivered.
The couple had already been sentenced twice for the concealment of these drawings, lithographs and other collages. He had obtained in cassation the annulment of his conviction by the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence in December 2016 on the grounds that it had not demonstrated that the works "came from a theft", this which won him a third time in Lyon.
The spouses assured that the works had been handed over to them by Picasso's widow, Jacqueline, after the death of the artist, at the moment when a conflict broke out with the painter's heirs. Later, Jacqueline would have asked them to return the bags, except one for which she said: "Keep it, it's for you".
"It's the triumph of the truth and the end of a mystification", reacted Mr. Jean-Jacques Neuer, the lawyer of the son of the painter, Claude Ruiz-Picasso, believing that Pierre Le Guennec played for the account of art dealers "the role played by mules in the area of drug trafficking".
These 271 works of Picasso had resurfaced in 2010 when Mr. Le Guennec had presented to Mr. Ruiz-Picasso, to authenticate a part, including a notebook of 91 sketches, all dating from 1900 to 1932. The heirs had immediately complained.
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