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
