Olivier Baratelli

Olivier Baratelli, born in Nancy on October, 1964, is a French lawyer specializing in business criminal law, press law and the art market.

Career

Olivier Baratelli studied law at the University of Nancy, in parallel with a degree in political science.

Together with Paul Lombard, with whom he worked from 1989 to 2017, they defended Prince Victor-Emmanuel of Savoy, son of the last King of Italy, before the Paris Assize Court, where they obtained his acquittal on murder charges.

In France, he is also the lawyer of the "famille de France": lawyer to Henri d'Orléans, Count of Paris, first until his death in June 1999, then to several of his children. Today, Olivier Baratelli is the lawyer of the Duke of Orléans, Jacques d'Orléans, who is trying to recover the important assets inherited from the kings of France, which were kept by the Fondation Saint-Louis.

Political and financial affairs

From the start of the political and judicial affairs of the 1990s, Olivier Baratelli, along with Paul Lombard, acted as counsel for various ministers of the French Republic, such as Michel Charasse and Christian Pierret, as well as members of parliament, senators and the President of the French Republic, Christian Poncelet.

He represented Jacques Boyon, the RPR Treasurer, in the case of allegedly fictitious RPR jobs paid for by the Paris City Hall. Boyon received a suspended sentence6.

Olivier Baratelli was counsel, with his partner Paul Lombard, for the Federal Republic of Germany in the Elf trial, which led to the conviction of Loïk Le Floch-Prigent and André Tarallo.

Since 1998, Olivier Baratelli has acted as lawyer for various Bolloré Group companies; he is also Vincent Bolloré's personal lawyer in a number of cases in which he is suing the news website Basta! and the co-founder of the "Rue89" website, Pierre Haski8, for defamation.

In 2012, Pierre Mongin, then CEO of the RATP, asked Olivier Baratelli to assist him before judges Renaud Van Ruymbeke and Roger Le Loire, in charge of the Karachi affair11 : in March 2014, Olivier Baratelli obtained the pure and simple12 annulment of the indictment of Pierre Mongin, implicated because of his capacity as chief of staff to Prime Minister Édouard Balladur in 1995, and the closure of the case on the alleged use of special funds to finance the 1995 presidential campaign13.

He is also frequently involved in other French financial criminal cases.

He also defends the German chemical group Bayer and its insecticide Gaucho, accused of being partly responsible for the excessive mortality of bees.

Press law, art market and entertainment law

Olivier Baratelli defends a number of French celebrities, including Karl Zéro18, Guy Lux4, and Isabelle Adjani, who at the time was in a relationship with Doctor Stéphane Delajoux, for whom he also acted as lawyer for several years.

Olivier Baratelli is also a specialist in art market law: he defended auctioneer Jacques Tajan, who was sentenced by the Paris Correctional Court to a one-year suspended prison term and a 50,000 euro fine for forgery of a document20 , and was prosecuted alongside Roland Dumas in the Giacometti affair, as well as numerous artists including sculptor César21 , painter Robert Combas, and now painter Philippe Cognée.

Together with Paul Lombard, he is also the lawyer for the Pablo Picasso children, Maya Picasso, the artist's daughter, and Diana Picasso, the artist's granddaughter.

In 2008, Madame Françoise Cachin, Director of the Musée d'Orsay from 1986 to 1994 and Director of the Musées de France until 2001, granddaughter of the famous painter Paul Signac, entrusted Olivier Baratelli with the task of finding paintings stolen from her family during the war. On January 21, 2019, Olivier Baratelli obtained the conviction of the fence of a sketch by Georges Seurat: "Esquisse complète du dimanche après-midi à l'île de la Grande jatte", to three years' imprisonment, two of which were unsuspended, for handling stolen goods.

Olivier Baratelli has also worked extensively on cases involving paintings stolen during the 2nd World War: in 2004, he recovered in Tokyo an Alfred Sisley painting stolen by the Nazis in 1942 from the de Gunzburg family.

Olivier Baratelli is also the pro bono lawyer for the Fondation pour l'enfance.

He is also the pro bono lawyer for the Fondation AVEC, a non-profit organization that fights cancer under the aegis of Professor David Khayat.