Less Than Holy

pillage. plunder. profit.

[sothebys1744]

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Nature Morte aux Tulipes, 1932

2012/11/08, Sotheby’s N08998, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale

Sold: $41,522,500

On a day like today (2 March) in 1932, Pablo Picasso completed this extraordinary Nature morte aux tulipes, one of the celebrated ‘Marie-Thérèse pictures’ that would ultimately establish Picasso as the most famous artist in the world. Nature morte aux tulipes provides us with a synthesis of the two main media (painting and sculpture) that Picasso utilized to represent the scale, dimensionality and physical impact of his incomparable golden muse — Marie-Thérèse.

[lessthanholy]

Many Mexicans may have found it hard to believe that it was really him. That the pudgy little man with the Super Mario mustache being marched into a helicopter by a masked marine with gloved hand firmly on his neck was El Chapo, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the world’s most wanted, most elusive drug lord.

But it was. Mr. Guzmán was arrested early Saturday in a hotel-condominium in Mazatlán, on the Pacific Ocean in Sinaloa, the Mexican state that is the center of his global drug operation. Further straining belief, he was taken quietly, without a gun battle.

The government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has a triumph to celebrate but also the enormous challenge that comes with taking into custody someone so powerful and dangerous. No one knows what new violence may emerge from the decapitation of a multibillion-dollar crime network that extends from the mountains of rural Mexico to hubs in Chicago and other American cities and beyond. Though Mr. Guzmán had reportedly distanced himself from day-to-day control of his vast operation, many feel sure that the octopus will grow another head and continue as before. There are competing gangs, like the Zetas, known for insane violence and for expanding into human trafficking and extortion, that will surely seek to seize advantage. There are other splinter narco-groups and the unknown webs of influence among the government and businesses that will adjust to the new reality.

[sothebys1744]

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)

Au Moulin de la Galette, 1876 (31 in. by 45 in.)

1990/05/17, Sotheby’s N06018, Impressionist & Modern Paintings & Sculpture Part I

Sold: $78,100,000

*World Record Price at Auction for Pierre-Auguste Renoir*

*** Happy 173rd Birthday, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (25 Feb, 1841)! ***

[lessthanholy]

Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev this weekend, leaving behind his opulent compound.

Hundreds of people flocked to the grounds to see how Yanukovych had been living, and photos have surfaced of his luxurious mansion, extensive vehicle collection, zoo, golf course, and boat.

And he's not the only powerful Ukrainian enjoying a ridiculously luxurious residence.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/homes-of-ukrainian-government-officials-2014-2#ixzz2uG4JOsb2

[sothebys1744]

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935)

Suprematist Composition, 1916

2008/11/03, Sotheby’s N08485, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale

Sold: $60,002,500

*World Record Price at Auction for Kazimir Malevich*

*** Happy 135th Birthday, Kazimir Malevich (23 Feb, 1879)! ***

[lessthanholy]

A federal jury convicted former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Wednesday on charges that he accepted bribes, free trips and other gratuities from contractors in exchange for helping them secure millions of dollars in city work while he was in office.

The jury returned a guilty verdict against Nagin on 20 of 21 counts of corruption and other illegal activities, including bribery, fraud, money laundering and conspiracy, according to the Times-Picayune, a local New Orleans paper. 

Until sentencing, the former mayor will remain free on bond. However, he is facing a long prison term.

Nagin, who served as the city's mayor during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was indicted in January 2013 on charges that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and truckloads of free granite for his family business in exchange for promoting the interests of a local businessman.

He was also charged with accepting thousands of dollars in payoffs from another businessman for his help in securing city contracts.

Before the verdict was read, Nagin said outside the courtroom that he had "been at peace with this for a long time. I'm good."

Prosecutors called him a politician on the take who lined his pockets with some of the Katrina relief money flowing into the city, while defense attorneys questioned the credibility of those who had cut deals to testify against the former mayor.

[lessthanholy]

The mobsters, from the Calabria region of Italy, wanted a foothold in the underworld of New York City and thought their success smuggling drugs into Europe would serve them well on this side of the Atlantic.

Their methods were known to be precise.

“They put a hundred grams, two hundred grams in each fish” and “it takes a day to defrost and then it takes a day to take out,” Franco Lupoi said, according to prosecutors who say the conversation was recorded by investigators.

On Tuesday, federal authorities announced the arrests of Mr. Lupoi, the owner of a Brooklyn bakery, and six other people in New York on charges that included narcotics trafficking and money laundering and that were the culmination of a two-year undercover F.B.I. investigation. In Italy, the police announced the arrests of 17 people in connection with the investigation.

What made the case remarkable were not the charges but the defendants’ links to the ’Ndrangheta, the organized crime group based in Calabria that is notorious for kidnappings and for its success importing cocaine into Europe.

Prosecutors said the actions of Mr. Lupoi and the other local defendants suggested that ’Ndrangheta (pronounced n-DRANG-gay-tah) was seeking to expand to New York, an effort the authorities said they had not seen until this investigation. “We put an end to the ’Ndrangheta’s attempts to gain a foothold in New York,” Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said on Tuesday.

[lessthanholy]

The Philippine government has recovered more than US$29m from the Swiss accounts of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the search for more of his hidden wealth continues 28 years after he was toppled, an official has said.

The money, recovered over the last week, was part of the more than $712m from Marcos’s secret Swiss accounts now in government hands, said Andres Bautista, chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, the agency in charge of recovering Marcos’ allegedly ill-gotten wealth.

The government won ownership of the funds after several years of litigation in Singapore courts over claims by victims of human rights violations under Marcos’s rule and private foundations representing the Marcoses, Bautista said at a news conference.

Authorities had already recovered more than $4bn from an estimated $5-10bn amassed by the Marcoses during the dictator’s 20-year rule, he said.

Bautista said last month that the government was targeting at least 50bn pesos ($1.1bn) more.

“There is still a lot of work that can be done in respect to pursuing ill-gotten wealth,” he said on Wednesday.

“We should not allow ill-gotten wealth, the taking of ill-gotten wealth, to go unpunished.”

The Philippines’ supreme court ruled in 2003 that the Marcoses wealth in excess of their total legal income of around $304,000 from 1965 to 1986 was presumed to be ill-gotten.

Marcos died in exile in Hawaii in 1989 without admitting any wrongdoing during his presidency.

[lessthanholy]

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's federal police on Sunday said they arrested suspected drug boss Tirso Martinez Sanchez, who has been wanted in the United States and Mexico for allegedly running an operation that smuggled tons of cocaine across the border and into the United States and Europe.

The U.S. State Department has been offering a $5 million reward for information that could lead to the capture o fMartinez Sanchez, believed to be the leader of a group that brought 76 tons of cocaine into the United States between 2000 and 2003.

Mexico's Interior Ministry said in a statement that the arrest was the result of intelligence work by the country's federal police. It said that not one shot was fired during the operation.

Police believe Martinez Sanchez worked with other drug lords in Mexico as well as in Colombia, the statement said.

(Reporting by Elinor Comlay; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mexico-captures-suspected-drug-lord-linked-to-76-tons-of-cocaine-shipped-into-the-us-2014-2#ixzz2swARghrz

[lessthanholy]

A jury in Manhattan federal court has found former SAC portfolio manager Mathew Martoma guilty of insider trading, Bloomberg News reports. 

Martoma was found guilty on all three counts (two securities fraud, one conspiracy).

He faces up to 45 years in prison for all of those counts combined.

In the meantime, the judge said Martoma can remain free on bail before his sentencing. 

Today's verdict also gives U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara a track record of  79-0 for insider trading convictions.

In November 2012, Martoma—who worked at SAC subsidiary CR Intrinsic Investors— was charged in what the DOJ says is "the most lucrative" insider trading scheme in history.  

Prosecutors said that Matroma used negative confidential drug trial info in pharmaceutical companies, Elan Corporation and Wyeth, between the summer 2006 and mid-July 2008. The fund was then able to exit those positions and short those stocks avoiding losses of $276 million. 

SAC Capital, Stamford, Conn.-based hedge fund run by Steve Cohen, was criminally indicted last summer on insider trading charges. Federal prosecutors charged the fund "with criminal responsibility for insider trading offenses committed by numerous employees and made possible by institutional practices that encouraged the widespread solicitation and use of illegal inside information."

In November, SAC pleaded guilty to criminal insider trading charges and agreed to pay a $1.8 billion fine. 

The fund is currently in the process of finalizing its new corporate structure and picking a new name. SAC Capital will no longer manage outside capital and will operate as a family office fund.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mathew-martoma-vedict-2014-2#ixzz2sZca6aJM

[sothebys1744]

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918)

Dame mit Facher, 1917

1994/05/11, Sotheby’s N06557, Impressionist & Modern Paintings, Drawings & Sculpture - Part I

Sold: $11,662,500

*** On a day like today (6 Feb) in 1918, Gustav Klimt died. R.I.P. ***

[vicenews]

VICE on HBO: Episode 6 – Corruption

Segment 1: China’s Ghost Towns Fifteen years ago, China changed its policy so people could buy their own homes. Real-estate investments boomed, and new cities began popping up each year, many inspired by western design and mimicking iconic locales like Paris and lower Manhattan. The problem is: people don’t live here. One ghost city in Inner Mongolia, built to house one million people, is now an empty shell of unoccupied skyscrapers and abandoned construction sites. VICE checks out this and other urban failures to figure out how China’s preoccupation with growing its GNP turned “supply and demand” into “build now, sell later.” Segment 2: Egypt on the Brink Over two years ago, Arab Spring climaxed in the overthrow of President Mubarek in Egypt. But for many Egyptians, the situation has actually gotten worse, as has the man who replaced Mubarek: Mohamed Morsi, elected under the radical Muslim Brotherhood banner. VICE visits the embattled streets of Cairo, where opposition to Morsi has resulted in renewed mass protests and violence in Tahrir Square. Among those we meet: members of the Black Bloc, youthful revolutionaries who disguise themselves with hoods and scarfs while vowing to oust Morsi and destroy the Muslim Brotherhood.

[vicemag]

VICE News is putting all of Season 1 of VICE on HBO online for you to watch for free!

[rollingstone]

Silk Road was the eBay of vice, an online hub of guns, drugs and crime. But its alleged founder soon learned that you can’t rule the underworld without spilling some blood.

[sothebys1744]

Fernand Léger (1881–1955)

Étude Pour ‘La Femme En Bleu’, 1912-13

2008/05/07, Sotheby’s N08437, Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale

Sold: $39,241,000

*World Record Price at Auction for Fernand Léger*

*** Happy 133rd Birthday, Fernand Léger (4 Feb, 1881)! ***

[lessthanholy]

Rudolf-August Oetker was weeks away from becoming an officer in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS when he received word that his mother, two stepsisters and stepfather had been killed by an Allied bomb dropped on their family home in Bielefeld, Germany.

The loss wasn’t just a personal tragedy for the 28-year-old cadet. It was a blow to one of Adolf Hitler’s front-line suppliers, Dr. August Oetker OHG, whose dry goods were being shipped to German soldiers fighting in World War II.

Oetker was granted permanent leave from his duties to take control of the family business in October 1944. Over the next six decades, the former SS officer, who trained at Dachau concentration camp, would add interests in shipping, food, beverages, banking and hotels, creating a conglomerate that has more than 26,000 employees and 10.9 billion euros ($14.8 billion) in annual revenue.

“People at the company still regard him as a hero, who made the company big after the war,” Sven Keller, co-author of an Oetker-commissioned study about the family’s involvement with the Third Reich, said in an interview in Munich. “One needs to see both sides of the person.”

Oetker died in 2007, at age 90, leaving eight children from three marriages -- Rosely Schweizer, August Oetker, Bergit Douglas, Christian Oetker, Richard Oetker, Alfred Oetker, Carl Ferdinand Oetker and Julia Oetker -- and an empire now valued at $12 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The siblings have never appeared individually on an international wealth ranking.

[lessthanholy]

Wilson is set to earn $662,434 in 2014 and under the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement, rookie contracts cannot be renegotiated until three seasons have passed. So Wilson is locked into his salary for 2014, but what happens after that? Wilson is represented by baseball agent Mark Rodgers of Frontline Athlete Management (Wilson was selected by MLB’s Colorado Rockies in the 2010 draft). Rodgers can look to recent Super Bowl QB winners for guidance where contracts invariably hit nine figures.

Last year’s Super Bowl winning QB, Joe Flacco, inked a six-year, $120.6 million contract in March, including $52 million guaranteed with the Baltimore Ravens. Rodgers, who won the Super Bowl in Feb. 2011, signed a five-year, $110 million contract extension with the Green Bay Packers in April that included a record $62.5 million guaranteed. Brees won the Super Bowl in 2010 and signed a $100 million deal two years later.

Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks are also the most marketable players in the NFL. Peyton and Eli Manning, Brees, Rodgers and Brady are the only NFL players that make $5 million a year off the field (all appeared on our look at the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes). They’ve quarterbacked eight Super Bowl winners combined.

Wilson is already one of the NFL’s most marketable players. His jersey was the NFL’s second best seller in 2013, behind only Peyton Manning. He already has endorsement deals with Nike, Alaska Airlines, American Family Insurance, EA Sports and Levi’s. Wilson’s price tag just went up with Corporate America.

[lessthanholy]

A first-of-its-kind report issued by the European Union on Monday found that corruption across 28 member states costs the EU economy $162.19 billion a year.

The EU Anti-Corruption Report found that 76% of Europeans think corruption is widespread and 56% say the level of corruption in their own country has risen over the past three years. The report notes that many member nations have taken steps in recent years to battle petty or institutional corruption, but that results aren’t even across the states.

“Corruption undermines citizens’ confidence in democratic institutions and the result of law, it hurts the European economy and deprives states of much-needed tax revenue,” said European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in a statement on Monday. “Member states have done a lot in recent years to fight corruption, but today’s report shows that it is far from enough.”

Despite its finding that graft is endemic throughout the E.U., the report found that Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden are among the most transparent and least corrupt. Countries that need improvement include Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Spain, said the report.

Read more: E.U. Corruption Costs $162 Billion Per Year | TIME.com http://world.time.com/2014/02/03/report-corruption-costs-e-u-over-162-billion-a-year/#ixzz2sHLQuOfl