What is kept in the world's most secret art warehouse: the Freeport of Geneva

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Freeport of Geneva is one of the oldest free ports still operating today and also one of the largest warehouses. A Free Port is a kind of Free Economic Zone (FEZ), a trade zone with very little or no taxes. With millions of works of art stored within its walls, the Swiss Free Port of Geneva is considered the world's largest art warehouse and the most secret.

The Free Port is not a modern creation, its concept dates back to antiquity. At that time, cities, states and countries allowed goods to be transported through their harbors duty-free or with attractive conditions to boost their economic activity. Goods in transit could benefit from lower duties compared to imports for the domestic market. A famous example of these early free ports is the Greek island of Delos in the Cyclades archipelago. The Romans turned it into a free port around 166 BC. e., and it became a trade center in the Mediterranean region. As trade routes changed, Delos replaced other cities as trade centers.

Free ports developed in the Middle Ages. Several European port cities such as Marseille, Hamburg, Genoa, Venice or Livorno have established themselves as leading shopping centers. During the 19th century, free ports became global and were established in strategic trading locations such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Colon, Panama. At the same time, in 1888-89, the free port of Geneva was created. At first, the Freeport of Geneva, the warehouse that housed the city's grain supplies, became the largest and most secret art warehouse in the world.

Geneva is not a port city, it has only a small harbor on the shores of the lake of the same name. However, at the crossroads of several European routes, Geneva has hosted many international trade fairs since the 13th century. This contributed to the formation of the city as one of the leading shopping centers in Europe. This also led to the development of his famous banking sector. Many international organizations operate in Geneva today, including several United Nations agencies. The city is also considered one of the most important financial centers in the world.

Geneva has been a free zone since 1813, two years before joining the Swiss Confederation. In the 1850s, the Geneva authorities decided to create a warehouse for the city's grain supplies. Over the years, space requirements grew and new warehouses were built. Between 1888 and 1889, the Ports Francs et Entrepôts de Genève (Geneva Free Ports and Warehouses) was born. The local authorities decided to establish a private company with the State of Geneva as the majority shareholder.

Originally built to store the basic necessities of the population such as food, timber and coal, it developed along with the city. In the early twentieth century, cars and wine barrels were added to inventory, and rail links to the national network simplified the flow of goods. The mechanization of storage processes also sped up the free port.

The Freeport of Geneva also played a role during World War II, as the Red Cross used warehouses to store and ship goods to victims and prisoners of war. After the end of World War II, economic activity resumed and the Freeport of Geneva continued its expansion. In 1948, the first valuable goods - gold bars - arrived at the warehouse. Other precious goods were piled up next to the gold. More and more fancy cars were joining the items stored in the port. In 1952, the inventory counted ten thousand Vespa scooters within the walls of the free port.

Over the years, more and more luxury items such as diamonds, pearls, vintage cars, antiques, bottles of excellent wine appeared in the freeport. With a volume sufficient to store three million bottles of wine, the Freeport of Geneva is even today considered “the world's largest wine cellar”. Today, a large number of rough diamonds are in transit through the Free Port of Geneva. It also became the largest art warehouse in the world and the most secret.

Today the Freeport of Geneva consists of various warehouses scattered throughout the Geneva canton. The headquarters and main buildings are located in La Praia, an industrial area south of the canton, just a few kilometers from the French border. The entire Freeport of Geneva extends over one hundred and fifty thousand square meters, half of which is duty-free.

The ever-growing number of art and antiquities in storage has prompted Freeport to improve security. The headquarters building, a large, windowless concrete block surrounded by barbed wire fences, rises above vast basements. This is the tip of the iceberg, designed to withstand earthquakes and fires.

Inside, several rooms fully meet certain criteria in order to ensure the highest level of safety of the items inside. Works of art and antiques are stored in hygrometric and temperature controlled rooms designed as impervious safes. They are locked behind armored doors built to protect against explosives and equipped with biometric readers, giving access to the fortunate few. The Free Port of Geneva is said to house the world's largest art collection, valued at one hundred billion US dollars. The journalist and art critic Marie Mertens estimated the number of artworks in Freeport at about $ 1.2 million. The collections of the great museums are nothing compared to this: the Museum of Modern Art in New York has about two hundred thousand works of art.

The masterpieces are secretly kept behind its walls. The New York Times reported that Freeport houses a thousand works by Picasso, as well as works by Da Vinci, Klimt, Renoir, Warhol, Van Gogh and many others. This would make the Freeport of Geneva the world's largest "museum" that no one can visit.

The Free Port is an excellent choice for business. As a transit area, owners do not pay taxes as long as their goods remain in place. No one knows who is selling what to whom and at what price: ideal for discrete art sales and fraudulent transactions. Interestingly, a painting can be bought and sold several times without even leaving Freeport. Many of these operations have escaped the control of the customs administration. At least that was until recently.

In 1995, the first scandal tarnished the reputation of the Free Port of Geneva. Documents proving the existence of an international network of looted artifacts were discovered when a former Italian police officer crashed his car on the road between Naples and Rome. Italian police have gained access to the Free Port of Geneva to investigate. They discovered that the Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici was hiding thousands of stolen Roman and Etruscan antiquities in his vault in the free port. Many of them have been sold to renowned museums. In 2004, Medici was sentenced to several years in prison and a fine of ten million euros. This was only the beginning of several scandals involving the Geneva Freeport.

A few years later, the authorities became interested in another free port storage facility. In 2003, the customs office of Zurich airport discovered an Egyptian artifact - a carved head of a pharaoh, sent from Qatar to Geneva. After receiving a search warrant in one of the vaults of the Free Port of Geneva, the Swiss authorities investigated further and made an incredible discovery. A total of two hundred and ninety Egyptian antiquities were locked behind door 5.23.1, including several carefully preserved mummies. Following this important discovery of the Egyptian and international antiquities trafficking network, the Egyptian delegation traveled to Switzerland to assess the contents of the vault. The stolen artifacts were eventually returned to Egypt.

Since 2003, efforts have been made to prevent fraud and money laundering. Switzerland has established stricter laws regarding the transfer of cultural property. This allowed them to ratify the 1970 UNESCO Convention against the Illicit Traffic in Cultural Property. The 2005 National Decree requires knowledge of the ownership, value and origin of all cultural property imported into the country. It entered into force at the Free Port of Geneva in 2009 when comprehensive inventories became mandatory and customs controls were tightened.

Although there were still violations in the inventories, the new law uncovered several cases of fraud involving stolen works of art. Along with looted antiquities, the free port may also store artwork obtained from the looting of Jewish property during the Holocaust.

One of them, the work of Modigliani, made headlines. Parisian Jewish art dealer Oscar Stettiner was the owner of the 1918 painting "Seated Man with a Cane". Stettiner presented the artist's work at the Venice Biennale in 1930. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Oscar had to leave Paris, leaving behind his belongings, including the work of Amedeo. In 1944, the Nazis sold the painting at auction to the American art dealer John Van der Klipp. After the end of the war, Stettiner filed a lawsuit to return the painting. The legendary work of art then disappeared for several decades before reappearing at an auction in 1996.

The Panama-based International Art Center (IAC) bought it for $ 3,200,000 and stored it in the Free Port of Geneva. Stettiner's heir, Philip Maestracci, has filed a lawsuit against Monegasque billionaire and art dealer David Nahmad and his son Helly, both suspected owners of IAC. Even if they argued otherwise, the 2016 Panama Papers leaked revealed that David Nahmad was indeed the head of the IAC shell company. Justice has yet to decide who is the rightful owner of Modigliani's $ 25 million masterpiece.

In 2016, a new regulation on money laundering was adopted. The Free Port began to strive for greater transparency. They are currently tracking the tenants of each box as well as the sub-tenants, checking Interpol's databases for fraud. Switzerland joined the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) in 2018, exchanging banking data with other countries. Evidence of the shift towards better traceability is the departure of several dubious clients using the now banned shell corporations to other less important vacant ports. The Freeport of Geneva offers its clients freedom of action suitable for transactions in the art market and a guarantee of the political and legal stability of a country complying with international rules, which does not apply to every free port.

After the economic crisis of 2008, investors took refuge in gold or art, increasing the number of deals in the art market. After the boom in the art market, free ports have become real centers of art, attracting experts, developers, restorers and many other professionals associated with it. The Freeport of Geneva became the leader in the storage of works of art. Art-related companies account for forty percent of its total. The largest of these, Natural Le Coultre, a shipping company owned by Yves Bouvier, occupies twenty thousand square meters of a free port. Along with the vaults, the company operates framing and artistic restoration workshops. All services provided in the duty-free zone of the free port are also tax-free.

Other art companies rent space in the Freeport: museums, art galleries, merchants, collectors, and laboratories for the scientific study of works of art. Indeed, with the exception of large museums and institutions with their funds, research laboratories and restoration studios, small museums, galleries and individuals need places such as free ports, where their collections are stored safely, in appropriate conditions, where they can be analyzed, executed., restore and prepare for transportation.

Free ports, initially used as duty-free transit zones, have now become indispensable storage sites for art and antiquities. The Freeport of Geneva promotions provide many exhibitions and art fairs around the world, including Art Basel, the renowned international art fair. Free ports became central to the storage of works of art, especially large ones, as collectors, galleries and museums needed more space to store their collections.

One of the major drawbacks is that some of the greatest works of art are kept in Freeport's vaults indefinitely, away from the public. Works of art are viewed as nothing more than investments that have never been seen by anyone other than their owners. Some of the world's cultural heritage is neatly hidden in the most secret art warehouses. Jean-Luc Martinez, director of the Louvre, has identified the free ports as the greatest museums that no one can see.

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