Antiquorum Old, New Management Trade Accusations

By William George Shuster -- JCK Online, 2/1/2008 2:00:00 AM

The past and current operators of watch auctioneer Antiquorum held competing press conferences Nov. 30 in Geneva to denounce each other and reveal that each is suing the other. The events stemmed from the August 2007 ouster of Osvaldo Patrizzi, Antiquorum's founder and former chief executive officer, and other officials by its new directors.

John Tsukahara, Antiquorum's CEO, said a commissioned review by independent auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers detected “some financial mismanagement and irregularities, caused by the former management.” That led Antiquorum in late October to file civil and criminal complaints against the former managers for what another Antiquorum official called “tremendous amounts of money, multimillions.” The audit wasn't released.

Patrizzi countered that a separate independent audit by Christian Masson, which was denied access to Antiquorum's accounting records but used documents “from different sources,” found no financial irregularities. Patrizzi has filed civil and criminal complaints against Antiquorum's new operators in Geneva and the United States.