Ex-Christie's man lies low in scandal

A BRITISH auction boss accused of being at the centre of a multi-million pound plot to fix art house prices is lying low in France as his co-defendant starts a jail term.

Former Sotheby's chairman Alfred Taubman was jailed on Monday for concocting a secret deal to fix commission levels with arch-rival Christie's. Taubman, 77, one of America's richest men, was given a one-year sentence by a New York judge and fined £5.3m.

But the Englishman said to have hatched the plan with him, former Christie's chairman Sir Anthony Tennant, 71, remains a free man. He has been charged in the US with price-fixing but refused to travel to New York for the trial. As it is not a criminal offence in Britain, Sir Anthony cannot be extradited to the US. But federal prosecutors have described him as 'a fugitive' and if he ever sets foot in the US again he will be arrested.

Workers on his country estate near Andover, Hampshire, said Tennant was away in France and 'will not be back for weeks'. Phone calls were diverted to a line in France which was answered by a woman who would only say: 'He is not speaking to anyone.' An old Etonian and former Scots Guard, Tennant earned a reputation for rescuing ailing companies and successfully nursed Guinness back to respectability after the share-rigging scandal of the Eighties.

Meanwhile, Taubman hopes to serve his prison sentence playing tennis and sunbathing on a Florida beach. His lawyers asked the sentencing judge to send him to the white-collar prison known as 'Club Fed'. Elgin Federal Prison in Fort Walton has no bars or fences and offers yoga classes, tennis courts and sunbathing. It was rated as the best place to serve a sentence by the business magazine Forbes.

His lawyers argued Taubman should be spared jail, saying he was in poor health and might not survive prison. But Judge George Daniels said the property baron, who is still the largest shareholder in Sotheby's, had 'swindled an unsuspecting public' in a 'deceitful, secretive criminal scheme'.

Prosecutors had pushed for Taubman to be given the maximum three-year sentence for swindling clients of lost fees estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. But his lawyers launched a huge public relations campaign, enlisting the support of Queen Noor of Jordan, former US President Gerald Ford and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.