•

A. Alfred Taubman: "There were
a number of in the prison,
but less than 10 would admit we
were. So we had only eight fir a
mirgan e•oy .Sabbath.''

The Art Of Being A Fall Guy

A. Alfred Taubman sits down with the IN and goes on the record about
the Sotheby's-Christie's scandal, the "guilty" verdict and time spent in prison.

BILL CARROLL

Special to the jewish News

or a man who went through an embarrassing trial, lost his jobs, paid mil-
lions of dollars in fines and judgments, and served time in prison, A. Alfred
Taubman is in a pretty good mood. In fact, "jovial" might be a better
description of the billionaire shopping center tycoon and Jewish philanthropist as
he sat in his plush Bloomfield Hills office discussing his role in the Sotheby's-
Christie's auction house scandal that rocked the business world at the
turn of the new century.
"If I didn't laugh about it, I would cry," said Taubman, who is the
central figure in a new book on the subject, The Art of the Steal: Inside
the Sotheby's-Christie's Auction House Scandal (G.P. Putnam's Sons,
$26.95), written by transplanted British author Christopher Mason.
Taubman, with his arm in a sling after chipping a bone during a fall while on
vacation in Turkey, maintained his innocence of conspiring to fix commission rates
on sales of fine art. He described how he was the "fall guy" for his own CEO at
Sotheby's and two top officers at archrival Christie's.
He also regaled this visitor with some humorous stories about his friends and
foes in the case, his time in prison, and even the "good old days" when he and
David Hermelin, the late Bingham Farms business entrepreneur and philanthro-

piss, sang a song parody and did a soft-shoe dance to entertain at one of Franklin
philanthropist Max Fisher's birthday parties.
Mason is a Cambridge University graduate who fell in love with New York on a
visit in 1983 and moved there to write for newspapers and magazines about art,
fashion and society. For the 376-page Art of the Steal, he sat through Taubman's
two-month trial in Manhattan and conducted 2,400 interviews with 300 people
over 2 1/2 years — including four hours with Taubman. Mason says Taubman even
called him to tell him he did a "great job" on the book.
'Alfred Taubman was probably the least person involved in this
alleged price-fixing collusion," said Mason in an interview from his New
York home. "As hard as it is to imagine he is innocent, that might very
well be the case. Many feel he at least wasn't guilty as charged. But he
had a good attitude about going to prison; he decided to just get psy-
ched up and serve his time."
Taubman laughs when he recalls how two of the jurors, a U.S. postal worker
and a delicatessen waiter, gave him darting looks the first day of the trial that
strongly implied their minds were already made up that he was guilty, no matter
what else happened. Taubman said the last juror who held out for acquittal was
tricked by the others, who told him erroneously there was a "time limit" on the
jury's deliberations, and that he had better hurry up and go along with everyone.
"That juror later shrugged it off by saying I was so rich that I probably commit-

SPE CIAL
REP ORT

FALL GUY

on page 43

8/20

2004

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