We were privileged to file today a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of our client, art dealer Alexander Khochinsky. The petition asks the Court for reinstatement of a lawsuit against Poland for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (i.e., sovereign immunity) for Poland’s effort to have Khochinsky extradited from New York as leverage to force him to relinquish a painting that he inherited from his father. The case invokes three provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1605 (the FSIA): the implicit waiver exception, the counterclaim exception, and the non-commercial tort exception. The basis on which we seek the Court’s review is simple: if the holding below is the law, then no one is safe in the United States from any number of rogue regimes that abuse the extradition system for discriminatory and persecutory reasons. To allow this decision to stand is a threat to any American. What if, for example, Turkey pursued a Christian American in similar fashion motivated by religious animus about owning a particular kind of art from the Ottoman Empire? What if the Taliban, now the de facto government of Afghanistan, declared a worldwide intention to find Jews in possession of Pashto cultural property? What if China declared American intellectual property to be revolutionary patrimony?
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Topics:
China,
Alexander Khochinsky,
Holocaust claims,
extradition,
FSIA,
"Girl with Dove",
Foreign Sovereign Immunities,
Poland,
Sullivan and Worcester LLP,
28 U.S.C. § 1605,
Operation Barbarossa,
Taliban,
Afghanistan,
Turkey,
Pashto
Last week, on behalf of our client Alexander Khochinsky, an art dealer, we filed a petition to rehear en banc the June 18, 2021 decision by a three-judge panel affirming the dismissal of the lawsuit against Poland for lack of subject matter jurisdiction (i.e., sovereign immunity). The case invokes three provisions of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1605 (the FSIA): the implicit waiver exception, the counterclaim exception, and the non-commercial tort exception. The basis on which we seek rehearing is simple: if the holding of the District Court and panel of the DC Circuit is the law, then no one is safe in the United States from any number of rogue regimes that abuse the extradition system for discriminatory and persecutory reasons.
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Topics:
Alexander Khochinsky,
Holocaust,
extradition,
FSIA,
"Girl with Dove",
Poland,
Operation Barbarossa,
Law and Justice Party,
Judge Rakoff,
SDNY
My client Alexander Khochinsky is safely back in the United States after an eight-month ordeal spurred by Poland’s retaliation for his assertion of restitution for his mother’s property lost in Poland during the Holocaust. The rejection this month by the French courts of Poland’s request to extradite my client for prosecution in the courts of Poland—courts called out as lacking judicial independence by the European Court of Justice—was the second failed attempt by Poland to abuse the international extradition system, and came directly on the heels of being held in default in Khochinsky’s lawsuit here in the United States for damages arising out of Poland’s bad-faith extradition effort that ended in 2015. Khochinsky is represented in France by Jean-Jacques Neuer.
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Topics:
Alexander Khochinsky,
Nazi-looted art,
Red Army,
extradition,
FSIA,
"Girl with Dove",
Antoine Pesne,
Poland,
Przemysl,
USSR,
Belzec,
Lviv,
Uzbekistan,
European Court of Justice,
Paris Charles de Gaulle,
Tashkent,
28 U.S.C. § 1607,
28 U.S.C. § 1605(a),
Paris Court of Appeal
Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, was detained at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. The current detention parallels Poland’s previous failed attempts to extradite Khochinsky from the United States in 2015, a request that was dismissed and which led to his pending lawsuit for that retaliatory extradition attempt. Khochinsky, an art dealer, reached out to Poland about a painting, Girl with Dove, that he had inherited from his parents that looked similar to one that Poland was seeking, and asked to open a dialogue about what had happened to his mother’s home. In response, Poland charged him with a crime and asked the United States to extradite him for prosecution. The U.S. District Court in Manhattan dismissed the request for extradition in 2015, but by then Khochinsky had suffered months of detention and the destruction of his business. Khochinsky—an American citizen—was detained just before boarding his flight to New York on Monday and informed that there was an Interpol or European request for his extradition made by Poland.
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Topics:
Alexander Khochinsky,
Red Army,
"Girl with Dove",
Sullivan & Worcester LLP,
Poland,
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
Przemysl,
Leningrad,
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport,
Hague Convention on the Service Abroad,
Jean-Jacques Neuer,
Polish Central Authority,
USSR
(WASHINGTON, D.C.-June 27, 2018) Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Poland for that country’s efforts to extradite him after he sought restitution of his mother’s property. Khochinsky, an art dealer, reached out to Poland about a painting, Girl with Dove by Antoine Pesne, that he had inherited from his parents and that looked similar to one that Poland was seeking, and asked to open a dialogue about what had happened to his mother’s home. In retaliation, Poland charged him with a crime and asked the United States to extradite him for prosecution. The U.S. District Court in Manhattan dismissed the request for extradition in 2015, but by then Khochinsky had suffered months of detention and the destruction of his business.
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Topics:
Alexander Khochinsky,
Nazi-looted art,
Red Army,
Holocaust,
extradition,
"Girl with Dove",
Sullivan & Worcester LLP,
Antoine Pesne,
Poland,
Nicholas M. O'Donnell,
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
Przemysl,
Leningrad
A Polish man arrested in February after being accused of trying to sell in Moscow a painting looted by the German army from the National Museum of Poznan during World War II will not be extradited to Poland. The U.S. District Court in New York (Rakoff, J.) concluded that Alexander Khochinsky did not acquire "Girl with Dove" by Antoine Pesne—stolen by the German army—with the knowledge that it was stolen property, and thus, could not be extradited. While there could be a second attempt to extradite him for his conduct after he learned the Polish government considered the painting to be stolen (when he had proposed to exchange it for restitution for his mother’s home), it seems unlikely. The whereabouts of the painting are unknown.
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Topics:
Republic of Poland,
Alexander Khochinsky,
Third Reich,
Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage,
extradition,
Book of Acquisitions of the Greater Poland Museum,
Moscow,
Restitution,
"Girl with Dove",
World War II,
Antoine Pesne,
Kaiser Friedrich-Museum,
National Museum of Poznan,
Litigation,
Diplomatic Note No. 35-15-2013,
Rakoff
