Founded in 1993, Mondex Corporation predated the landmark Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets by five years. In 1998, encouraged by the Washington Principles that were endorsed at the conference by 44 governments, we emboldened our approach to the restitution of looted art and other cultural property. With a willingness to innovate that still drives us today, we increased our investment of resources — time, effort, expertise and expense — to ensure we had the means and the methods to obtain justice for our clients.
“a willingness to innovate… increased our investment of resources…to ensure we had the means and the methods to obtain justice for our clients.”
Since then, our dedicated team has been responsible for numerous successful restitution cases. Each one of them is meaningful, and each offers closure to families deprived of their property by theft, coercion or forced sales during the Holocaust.
Our journey with these families begins when they mandate us to engage in the meticulous process of gathering information and evidence and analyzing these details to develop a compelling restitution strategy. Because this evidence is often found in different languages and is scattered over multiple countries, we source it virtually as well as in person — through diligent research in archives, libraries, and elsewhere. We also search proactively for our clients’ misappropriated property by attending art fairs, exhibitions, museums and galleries, and visiting them too, both virtually or in person.
Keys to Successful Restitutions
When we find a match with an artwork or other cultural artifact, our legal team studies the best way to obtain restitution. Ideally, claimants trying to recover stolen property would rely on the goodwill of the current possessor. In practice, however, restitution can be challenging. Mondex relies, for successful restitution, on its many relationships with individuals, organizations and agencies in the worlds of art and government, as well as with police forces, when necessary, to secure the return of our clients’ property. Should a claim become public, we also partner with experts in media relations.
“We have successfully resolved restitution cases involving many governmental organizations”
We have successfully resolved restitution cases involving many governmental organizations, including: the Ministry of Culture of The Netherlands; the Ministry of Culture of France; the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS) of France under the auspices of the French Prime Minister’s office; the Claims Resolution Tribunal in conjunction with the governments of Switzerland and the United States; the Bavarian State Painting Collection; the Ministry of Culture of Germany and several prominent museums located in Europe and North America.
We also value our relationships with museums, foundations, auction houses and international law firms, as these entities play a crucial role in our work once a restitution settlement agreement has been reached. Major auction houses, dealers and other specialists work closely with us to safely and securely insure, collect and transport recovered artwork or cultural artifacts, in order to return them to our clients. If any of these restituted objects have been damaged over time, we arrange for their expert restoration in cooperation with highly skilled art restorers. And while there do exist some lower-value restitutions that are not economically feasible for Mondex to pursue, we also recover artworks and cultural artifacts of nominal value. In these cases, we use part of our earnings from successful restitutions of higher value to fund the recovery process associated with lower value artworks, as restitution is our primary goal.
