A RPC, a Lituânia e o problema de Taiwan - opinião da CGTN

 O nacionalismo chinês — aqui expresso pela CGTN — se opõe à “ideologia ocidental” que pretende separar Taiwan da integridade de sua jurisdição soberana, como pretende fazer a “política externa baseada em valores” da Lituânia. O problema de Taiwan é, provavelmente, o mais grave na agenda de política externa da RPC.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

CGTN Opinion 18:29, 11-Aug-2021

Lithuania courting danger with 'values-based foreign policy'

First Voice

Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events. 

Lithuania's provocative move to allow the opening of a "representative office" under the name of "Taiwan" threatens a permanent rift in the relationship between Lithuania and China. It also shows the insidious threat of so-called values-based diplomacy to international peace and stability.

After a shift in government in October 2020, Lithuania adopted an outspoken, hostile attitude toward China. There are several reasons behind this abrupt change in policy, driven by domestic political imperatives.

The most obvious is that the new center-right coalition is driven by Western ideology. The main coalition partner, the Homeland Union, was a key backer of the discredited austerity measures put in place after the global financial crisis. It seeks closer economic ties with Washington and a stronger EU.

The Homeland Union was formed to challenge the Communist Party of Lithuania after the breakup of the Soviet Union and has defined itself by strongly supporting nationalism. Today's Homeland Union leaders have drawn a historically inaccurate but emotionally powerful parallel between Lithuania's decision to claim independence and separatist movements in Taiwan.

Although this false comparison falls apart when looking at the concrete specifics of the historical situations, it has emotionally resonated with the public and been a savvy political maneuver. For this reason, defending Taiwan separatism makes for good domestic politics.

But most importantly, the provocative move is designed to curry favor with the Biden administration, which Lithuania relies on for its security.

The Lithuanian coalition government has pledged to follow a "values-based foreign policy," the same language used by U.S. President Joe Biden as he attempts to form an anti-China coalition, cajoling countries into choosing between Washington and Beijing.

U.S. President Joe Biden walks to the Oval Office of the White House after arriving on Marine One in Washington, D.C., U.S., Aug. 10, 2021. /Getty

It may have a principled ring to it. But, in practice, the term "values-based foreign policy" means rejecting any political, judicial or economic system that doesn't mimic one of those in the Western countries. It comes from the assumption that there are universally applicable standards for all political, economic and social development when, in fact, every country has its own tradition and development path.

Any effort to impose an alien system of government at gunpoint is doomed to fail, as have been seen with the U.S.' futile attempts. It is arrogant and unrealistic.

Politics has made it advantageous for Lithuania's ruling coalition to lash out at China. But the decision to play domestic politics by encouraging Taiwan separatism is destabilizing and irresponsible.

For Lithuania and the rest of the "values-based" coalition against China President Biden is attempting to form, Taiwan may just be a piece in a giant chess game to contain China's rise. But this is not how China views the matter. The bedrock of China's ties with any country and the United Nations is the one-China policy, which acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China. It is the cornerstone of China's international relationships and the basis for mutual trust. Any efforts to undermine China's sovereignty on this issue are extremely dangerous. 

Supporting Taiwan separatism to obtain a domestic political advantage or pressure China will not only fail but could trigger a chain of events that could lead to wholly unnecessary conflicts.

For reasons that may have to do with nostalgic colonial arrogance or a racist tendency to consistently underestimate the Chinese people's ability and resolve, the West seems unable to process the fact China will not accept meddling in its domestic affairs and challenges to its territorial integrity. Moves such as Lithuania's are simply encouraging a downward spiral that leads to a dead end.

And the U.S.' open support of Lithuania on the Taiwan matter just shows the world how far-reaching and dangerous this "value-based foreign policy" is turning out to be.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)

O Mercosul vai deixar de existir pela animosidade entre os presidentes da Argentina e do Brasil?

Liderança presidencial no Mercosul: desentendimentos Brasil-Argentina

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

(www.pralmeida.org; http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

 [Objetivo: respostas a consulta de jornalista; finalidade: Infobae-Argentina]

  

Consulta recebida de jornalista argentino me leva a discutir novamente a questão do bloco, para atender a demandas específicas sobre o relacionamento presidencial no processo de integração do Mercosul. Reproduzo as perguntas e coloco minhas respostas em português.

1) Por primera vez desde la creación del Mercosur habrá en Argentina y Brasil presidentes con orientaciones políticas y económicas totalmente opuestas. ¿Cuáles pueden ser las consecuencias de este cambio sobre el futuro del bloque?

PRA: As consequências podem ser extraordinariamente danosas. Por características próprias dos processos de integração bilateral Brasil-Argentina, e quadrilateral no âmbito do Mercosul, as negociações e avanços – ou retrocessos – sempre guardaram uma grande dependência do bom entendimento entre os mandatários dos países nas iniciativas tomadas desde a redemocratização de meados dos anos 1980. O processo de integração bilateral entre o Brasil e a Argentina tem início ainda na primeira metade dos anos 1980, quando o presidente argentino Raul Alfonsin convidou o Brasil, ainda vivendo sob o regime militar, a iniciar uma aproximação econômica. O processo começou de verdade imediatamente após a retomada democrática no Brasil, com o presidente José Sarney, em 1985, com visitas recíprocas e a assinatura, no ano seguinte, do PICE, o processo de integração e cooperação econômica, ainda bilateral, mas já avançando para um Tratado de Integração, em 1988, prevendo a constituição de um mercado comum bilateral em dez anos, já chamado de Mercosul. Isso era ainda feito em bases estritamente de reciprocidade, formalizado em protocolos setoriais – num modelo dirigista e mercantilista – prevendo uma integração gradual, equilibrada, estritamente regulada pelos respectivos governos.

O processo deu um salto a partir dos presidentes Carlos Saul Menem e Fernando Collor, quando se decide adotar um processo automático – rebaixa calendarizada das tarifas aduaneiras, prevendo chegar a zero em quatro anos – e generalizado a todos os setores da economia, não mais dirigista ou limitado. Ou seja, se decidia, pela Ata de Buenos Aires – julho de 1990 –, chegar ao Mercosul na metade do tempo previsto no tratado de 1988. Os presidente dos países vizinhos demandaram adesão ao processo e, com exceção do Chile – que já estava mais avançado nos processos de abertura econômica e liberalização comercial –, se chega ao Tratado de Assunção, de março de 1991, que nada mais é do que a Ata de Buenos Aires do ano anterior, mas quadrilateralizada ao Paraguai e ao Uruguai. O empenho dos presidentes foi fundamental para sucesso do empreendimento.

O Mercosul avançou bastante bem na fase de integração e até na confirmação, em 1994, pelo Protocolo de Ouro Preto, de sua estrutura institucional, que contava com a presença dos presidentes a cada reunião do Conselho do bloco, a cada seis meses. Mesmo quando a Argentina começou a enfrentar problemas com a Lei de Conversibilidade (Plano Cavallo, de 1991), o bom relacionamento entre os presidentes Menem e Fernando Henrique Cardoso permitiu superar temporariamente as dificuldades, mediante a criação de um Grupo de Trabalho sobre a Coordenação de Políticas Macroeconômicas, uma tentativa de criação de um “mini-Maastricht” no Mercosul. A despeito da derrocada do regime cambial argentino, e a crise que o país enfrentou entre os anos 2001 e 2002, o Brasil sempre procurou ajudar nos processos de ajuste e de acordos junto ao FMI.

Depois de mudanças importantes nos dois países, com Lula no Brasil e Nestor Kirchner na Argentina, a partir de 2003, se podia supor que a adoção de políticas econômicas relativamente similares nos dois países – flexibilidade cambial, responsabilidade fiscal – poderia representar, para o Mercosul, o ingresso numa fase de coordenação real de políticas macroeconômicas e setoriais, em direção da eliminação de entraves ainda existentes, seja na zona de livre comércio, seja na própria união aduaneira, e a grande abertura que se necessitava fazer em busca de novos acordos no processo de interdependência global. Em razão, precisamente, de desentendimentos entre os dois presidentes, que pareciam competir pelo prestígio na região, os dois países tomaram caminhos totalmente diferentes: Lula preferiu politizar indevidamente o Mercosul – criando novos organismos que não tinham nada a ver com a vocação original do acordo comercial de integração –, e Kirchner embarcou numa nova onda nacionalista e protecionista, visando industrializar novamente a Argentina, mesmo à custa dos compromissos adotados no âmbito do Mercosul: introduziu assim salvaguardas abusivas no comércio intrarregional, medidas que contrariavam não só o espírito e a letra do Tratado de Assunção e das regras existentes no bloco, mas também o próprio acordo de salvaguardas no âmbito do Gatt-OMC. O bloco deixou assim de servir ao seu objetivo maior de ser uma plataforma para a inserção mundial das economias dos países membros no capitalismo global e se tornou um mercado autocentrado, quase um avestruz.

Com o advento de dois presidentes, Fernández e Bolsonaro, que parecem se situar nas antípodas do pensamento político, e do posicionamento partidário, não existem condições para um diálogo direto entre os dois presidentes sobre os problemas bilaterais – inclusive de cooperação em terrenos não necessariamente econômico-comerciais – e sobre os desafios que o Mercosul deve enfrentar para se qualificar como um bloco confiável em novos acordos externos, que possam representar compromissos promissores em termos de investimentos e criação de novas cadeias de valor.

A liderança dos presidentes é algo imprescindível num bloco cuja institucionalidade é bastante precária, não só pela ausência de qualquer supranacionalidade, mas também porque mesmo os regulamentos decididos no plano intergovernamental carecem muitas vezes de internalização e aplicação prática em cada um dos países membros.

2) El gobierno de Bolsonaro viene insistiendo en la necesidad de abrir el Mercosur y firmar tratados de libre comercio, mirados con mucha desconfianza por el futuro gobierno argentino. ¿Es posible que Brasil decida abandonar el Mercosur? Sin llegar a ese extremo, ¿qué decisiones podría tomar para debilitarlo?

PRA: Vejo como muito difícil alguma decisão do Brasil abandonar o Mercosul, apenas por que alguns dirigentes políticos, como o ministro da Economia, e mesmo o seu presidente, possam ter prevenções contra o bloco. O grau de interpenetração das duas economias, junto com as dos dois países menores, já avançou bastante, e para ser derrubada por um simples gesto de antipatia pessoal. O Mercosul, atualmente, pode não ser estrategicamente relevante para o Brasil no plano macroeconômico, mas ele segue sendo extremamente relevante, no plano microeconômico, para dezenas, centenas, milhares de empresas de todos os portes, dimensões e especializações, assim como para o agronegócio de maneira geral, uma vez que gera alguns bilhões de dólares de comércio intrarregional e é responsável por centenas de milhares de empregos em todas as cadeias produtivas.

O primeiro teste para ambos os países é, obviamente, honrar os compromissos firmados com os europeus no âmbito do acordo birregional com a EU, e depois partir para negociar com outros países ou blocos de países, como a Aliança do Pacífico, por exemplo. Assim, uma decisão de paralisar o Mercosul, ou mesmo de retrocedê-lo a uma simples zona de livre comércio, pode ser desastrosa para uma enorme diversidade de interesses nacionais, em todo o espaço econômico intra e extra-regional. Em outros termos, o Mercosul tem uma agenda de tarefas inconclusas, muitas delas afetando grandes interesses em cada um dos países membros, o que inevitavelmente depende não só de uma grande capacidade de liderança interna dos presidentes respectivos, pois muita coisa depende de reformas nas respectivas legislações nacionais, mas igualmente de uma visão de estadista, que cada um deles possa ter, ao desafiar lobbies poderosos com tendências protecionistas, e ao desenhar, juntos com seus ministros e seus contrapartes, em cada um dos países sócios, as reformas do bloco e sua futura conformação institucional.

Se ambos presidentes ouvirem seus diplomatas, seus conselheiros econômicos mais sensatos, logo desistirão da insana ideia de enfraquecer um projeto de grande aliança econômica entre as grandes parceiros do Cone Sul latino-americano, e passarão a encontrar maneiras de renovar o diálogo bilateral, mesmo que seja apenas restrito ao terreno econômico-comercial. As empresas, os trabalhadores dos dois países precisam de um bom entendimento Brasil-Argentina. Retornando a Roca: nada nos separa, tudo nos une.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brasília, 4 de dezembro de 2019

Famílias bilionarias sempre tem disputas milionarias, senão mais: 3 Bi na familia Goulandris (WSJ)

Vincent Van Gogh, ‘The Olive Pickers,’ 1889 

WSJ

ART

The $3 Billion Family Art Feud

By Kelly CrowThe Wall Street Journal, Saturday, July 2, 2016

For half a century starting in the 1950s, Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, lived in a manner worthy of a sun-soaked, Patricia Highsmith novel. They palled around with European aristocracy and flitted among their seven homes in places like Paris, New York’s Southampton and Switzerland’s Gstaad—when they weren’t sailing around the world on their yacht, “Paloma.”

The couple never had children. Instead, relatives say they devoted their energies to amassing one of the world’s best private art collections, valued at as much as $3 billion by one estimate. The trove of several hundred pieces included 11 Picassos, six van Goghs, five Cezannes and a rare pair of Monet’s 1894 views of the Rouen Cathedral, one bathed in blue hues and the other one in pink. The couple also had a bronze ballerina by Degas, a Pollock and a Balthus. When Balthus’s biographer, Nicholas Fox Weber, visited the couple in Switzerland, he said the paintings rimming their walls “made my knees go wobbly.”

The Goulandris collection is now at the center of one of the biggest and most complex legal disputes over art in Europe—including a bombshell revelation in the Panama Papers. The saga involves a collection of treasures that have largely been hidden for the past two decades, a secret seller using an offshore company to put up paintings for auction and a fight that boils down to one nonexistent will and one cryptic one. 

The chief protagonist in this 16-year family feud is a niece of the Goulandris’s who claims she and her cousins should have inherited much of the couple’s art after their aunt Elise died in 2000. The niece, Aspasia Zaimis, a feisty shipbuilder’s wife who is in her 70s and lives in Athens, says her aunt owned the trove when she died and intended for it to go to her relatives. Another set of cousins on her uncle’s side—and the couple’s namesake foundation—say otherwise. “People who say the collection wasn’t hers anymore are being unfair and degrading to my aunt,” Ms. Zaimis said. “I’m fighting for her.”

Left: Aspasia Zaimis photographed at her home in Porto Rafti, Greece, on June 20, 2016 | Right: Basil and Elise Goulandris in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland PHOTO: FROM LEFT: MYRTO PAPADOPOULOS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; ZAIMIS FAMILY

Her main opponent is one of the couple’s longtime employees, a soft-spoken, snowy-haired historian named Kyriakos Koutsomallis, who manages the art collection of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens, which claims a right to some of the disputed art. Mr. Koutsomallis and the foundation are currently transforming a neoclassical mansion in Athens to become a 12-story museum that’s expected to display at least some of the Goulandris collection when it opens early next year. Mr. Koutsomallis, along with relatives on Mr. Goulandris’s side of the family, claim the most valuable pieces of the couple’s art collection—83 works— were quietly sold to an offshore company several years before Mr. Goulandris died and should not be part of any inheritance claims. Twenty nine of those 83 paintings—including some choice works like Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 “Olive Pickers” —have since been redirected back to the foundation, Mr. Koutsomallis has said in court papers, and are therefore not part of the widow’s estate. No one will say where the remaining works are located.

To finance her continuing court battles, Ms. Zaimis has made an unusual arrangement with a longtime New York private dealer, Ezra Chowaiki. In exchange for the lucrative rights to sell any paintings should Ms. Zaimis eventually prevail, Mr. Chowaiki said he has helped fund a case in Greece which Ms. Zaimis filed in 2001 and later shifted to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Arrangements like these are rare outside the realm of Nazi art restitution. Heirs to lost Jewish fortunes often team up with art lawyers who work for a promised share of any eventual art sales—an arrangement depicted in last year’s Helen Mirren film, “Woman in Gold.”

Now, art lawyers are following the Goulandris case to see if Mr. Chowaiki’s long bet on the collection, which he estimates is valued at $3 billion, will pay off or flounder. No estate worth more than roughly $500 million has ever come to auction. Thomas C. Danziger, a New York art lawyer who isn’t involved with the case, said, “It’s Agatha Christie meets Homer.”

One big reason for the ownership dispute: Mr. Goulandris died in 1994 without a will. After his death at age 81, relatives from his side of the family say they told his widow that in 1985 Mr. Goulandris had sold off the 83 gems of the couple’s collection to a Panamanian company controlled by his side of the family. It was called Wilton Trading. Mr. Goulandris was in debt at the time, the relatives say, and thus he accepted a firesale price of $31.7 million, or roughly $382,000 apiece. Elise Goulandris didn’t initially know about the sale but she allegedly went along with it, relatives said in court documents.

Greek Art Odyssey

A look at some of the highlights of the roughly $3 billion art collection of the Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris, whose art holdings sit at the center of a 16-year family feud.

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In 1972, Basil and Elise Goulandris bought this Fernand Leger from 1919, 'Mechanical Elements,' and hung it in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland. The painter’s 1990 catalogue raisonné lists them as its owner as recently as 1990—even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives say he sold it in 1985. When asked about the discrepancy, the director of the Goulandris’s museums in Andros, Greece, told Swiss prosecutors that the misattributions were all clerical errors. © ARS, NY/ADAGP, PARIS

The roughly $3 billion art collection of Greek shipping executive Basil and Elise Goulandris is at the center of a 16-year family feud, including Joan Miro’s 1926 'The Grasshopper.' Mr ...

Basil and Elise Goulandris often traveled with the gems of their art collection, shuttling them between their apartment in Paris and their chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, shown here. Hanging on the paneled back wall, from left, are Monet’s 1894 view of Rouen Cathedral, Pierre Bonnard’s 1907 'In the Bathroom' and Joan Miro’s 'The Grasshopper.' ZAIMIS FAMILY

Aspasia Zaimis, one of Ms. Goulandris’s four nieces, balked when the executor of her aunt’s estate told her that the bulk of her aunt’s collection had been sold in 1985. Ms. Zaimis said her aunt 'loved those paintings like they were her babies' and wouldn’t have approved of their sale to an offshore company. Ms. Zaimis, shown here, stands in front of Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 'The Olive Pickers' in Ms. Goulandris’s home in Gstaad. ZAIMIS FAMILY

The 2002 catalogue raisonné, or official inventory, of the sculptures of Edgar Degas said this bronze cast of 'Little Dancer, Aged 14,' belonged to Basil and Elise Goulandris, even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives claim he sold it in 1985. Other castings of the same sculpture have sold at auction for as much as $25 million. 

In 1991, art historian Nicholas Fox Weber visited the Gstaad home of Basil and Elise Goulandris and saw one of their prized pieces, Paul Cezanne’s 1883-84 'Portrait of the Artist Looking Over His Shoulder.' Mr. Weber, who now runs the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, described the 10-inch-wide canvas as 'one of the most magical paintings I’ve ever seen.' 

In 1996, Dutch scholar J.M. Meulenhoff updated his catalogue raisonné of Vincent van Gogh and included the painter’s 1888 'Still Life with Coffee Pot,' listing its owner as Ms. Goulandris—even though her husband’s relatives say Mr. Goulandris sold it in 1985. It was later exhibited by the Goulandris foundation at its museum in Andros. 

On June 14, 1957, Basil Goulandris made his international debut as a heavyweight collector at a Paris auction when he outbid Greek collector Stavros Niarchos to win a 1901 Paul Gauguin, 'Still Life with Grapefruit (Still Life with Apples and Fruit),' for $255,000—the most anyone had paid in more than a year for any painting that wasn’t by an Old Master, according to former Phillips auctioneer Simon de Pury in his 2016 memoir, 'Auctioneer.' 

In 1972, Basil and Elise Goulandris bought this Fernand Leger from 1919, 'Mechanical Elements,' and hung it in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland. The painter’s 1990 catalogue raisonné lists them as its owner as recently as 1990—even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives say he sold it in 1985. When asked about the discrepancy, the director of the Goulandris’s museums in Andros, Greece, told Swiss prosecutors that the misattributions were all clerical errors. © ARS, NY/ADAGP, PARIS

The roughly $3 billion art collection of Greek shipping executive Basil and Elise Goulandris is at the center of a 16-year family feud, including Joan Miro’s 1926 'The Grasshopper.' Mr. Goulandris bought this surrealist painting in 1972 and his relatives say he sold it in 1985, a sale his niece Aspasia Zaimis disputes. A 1993 Miro show catalog from New York’s Museum of Modern Art listed the work as coming from the collection of Ms. Goulandris. © SUCCESSIÓ MIRÓ/ARS, NY/ADAGP, PARIS

Ms. Goulandris lived for another six years. Her own will, which she drew up after her husband died, contained no detailed inventory of the art collection and didn’t acknowledge the disputed sale of the 83 masterpieces. She bequeathed what she described as “antiquarian objects of value” to her Athens foundation for a possible museum. She didn’t specify which objects should go to it.

Her will also excluded everyone on her husband’s side of the family. Whatever didn’t go to the foundation was to be distributed by Mr. Koutsomallis among six beneficiaries on her side of the family, who didn’t learn about the alleged sale of the 83 prized works until after Ms. Goulandris died, according to Ms. Zaimis.

Ms. Zaimis—who is one of the six named beneficiaries—doesn’t believe the sale ever happened. She said she doubts her uncle would have sold off his prized collection without telling his wife or getting a fair market price for the works. She believes her uncle’s relatives absconded with the art after her aunt died and then produced an elaborate tale to suit their agenda.

Ms. Zaimis filed a civil suit in Greece 15 years ago that has since shifted to Switzerland—because her aunt lived in Lausanne—alleging Mr. Koutsomallis and the foundation inappropriately excluded her aunt’s art assets from her estate. The suit is ongoing. A preliminary investigation into possible fraud is also under way in Liechtenstein, according to the public prosecutor there.

Certain facts seem to support Ms. Zaimis’ version of events. The 83 paintings in dispute remained in Mr. Goulandris’s possession for the rest of his life. He continued to lend them to museums and listed them in exhibit catalogs and artists’ catalogue raisonnés as being part of his and his wife’s collection. According to a paper expert hired by one Swiss prosecutor, the type of paper on which the original contract of sale was printed wasn’t manufactured until three years after Mr. Goulandris allegedly signed it.

Mr. Koutsomallis, the couple’s longtime foundation executive, told Swiss investigators in testimony six years ago that he didn’t know about the alleged $31.7 million sale until years later, and he said, “Admittedly, the agreed price for the artworks is very low.”

A rendering of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation Museum in Athens, Greece PHOTO: BASIL AND ELISE GOULANDRIS FOUNDATION

Documents leaked as part of the Panama Papers in April may end up having a bearing on the case: They reveal that three paintings put up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2005 by anonymous sellers were actually offered by Mr. Goulandris’s younger sister. The paintings—a Bonnard and two Chagalls—were part of the group of 83 paintings that Basil Goulandris allegedly sold in 1985. If the sale never happened, then Mr. Goulandris’s sister did not have the right to sell them, according to Ms. Zaimis.

Jean-Christophe Diserens, a Swiss lawyer who represents the foundation and Mr. Koutsomallis, said in an email that “nobody but Ms. Zaimis and her sponsors contest the validity” of Mr. Goulandris’s sale of the 83 paintings. Mr. Diserens also said Mr. Koutsomallis, who was also executor of Ms. Goulandris’s estate, “has strictly respected Mrs. Goulandris’s will and the written instructions he had received.”

Evanthea Veroutis-Anastasadi, Ms. Zaimis’s sister, said Thursday she respects her sister’s convictions but feels all their aunt’s art should be located and shipped to the foundation’s museum, not dispersed among family members. “No one is innocent in this situation—and it’s easy to want more and more—but I’ve decided to stay neutral,” Ms. Veroutis-Anastasadi said. “My peace of mind is more important than any collection.”

Three of the other four beneficiaries declined to comment; messages left with one more, and the Swiss lawyer who has represented them all, Jacques Haldy, were not returned. Representatives from Basil Goulandris’s side of the family declined to comment.

Of the 83 masterpieces that sit at the center of this dispute, only a few have even been seen in the past two decades, stoking curiosity about their whereabouts. Of that group, Mr. Koutsomallis, the couple’s art expert, told investigators that he could only pinpoint the location of 29 works because he said the widow had reclaimed them from her husband’s relatives and held them in another foundation called Sirina in Liechtenstein, according to Swiss court documents. But Ms. Zaimis and her lawyer say they don’t think Ms. Goulandris ever arranged for Sirina to own any of her art, including van Gogh’s “The Olive Pickers.” Today, dealers say that painting alone could sell for as much as $200 million.

A GREEK EPIC

When Basil Goulandris was born on the Greek island of Andros in 1913, his family was known for its discretion. Tabloids didn’t follow him around like they did Greece’s other young tycoons like Stavros Niarchos and Aristotle Onassis, who were both a few years older than him.

Mr. Goulandris proved no less ambitious, though. His grandfather, John, and father, Peter, built a business running sailing merchant ships and steamships throughout the Mediterranean. In the postwar economic boom, Mr. Goulandris and his four brothers transformed that firm, Orion Shipping and Trading, into a multibillion-dollar fleet of oceangoing oil tankers and cargo ships.

In 1950, Mr. Goulandris was living in New York when he met and married Elise Karadontis, a young divorcee from Athens. A few months after the ceremony, his eldest brother died of a heart attack. Mr. Goulandris, at age 37, stepped up and ran the firm for decades afterward.

Ms. Zaimis said her aunt and uncle shared a love of art, and the couple started collecting soon after they married, befriending artists like Marc Chagall and buying from galleries in Paris and New York.

They bought seminal pieces for their home like van Gogh’s “Olive Pickers” as well as pieces by significant living artists in Greece like sculptor Michael Tombros, who also hailed from the island of Andros. In 1979, the couple started a foundation and bought a building in Andros’s capital city of Hora to display Tombros’s pieces. They assigned one of their young employees, Mr. Koutsomallis, to help the foundation run their Museum of Contemporary Art.

Pablo Picasso’s 1907 “Dancer of Avignon” once hung at the top of the stairs in the Goulandris home in Gstaad. Its estimated $250 million value derives in part from its evocation of one of the artist’s masterpiece portraits of primitive-looking prostitutes, “The Ladies of Avignon,” which belongs to New York’s MoMA. PHOTO: © ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO/ARS, NY

In 1993, the year before Mr. Goulandris died and eight years after he allegedly sold off his best art, he and his wife announced they were going to create an even bigger $30 million museum specifically for their modern art in Athens designed by I.M. Pei. But four years after that, Ms. Goulandris, then widowed, had to go back to the drawing board after Greek archaeologists discovered the proposed museum site was on top of ancient ruins. The Greek culture ministry insisted she find somewhere else to build.

In 1999, Ms. Goulandris displayed in Andros for the first time the cream of her collection, a sumptuous survey of 29 pieces that Mr. Koutsomallis later told investigators she culled from the original group of 83 works and publicly exhibited as belonging to the Goulandris collection. She called the show “The Classics of Modern Art,” and it included van Gogh’s “Olive Pickers” as well as his sunny, large table scene from 1888, “Still Life with Coffee Pot.”

Basil Goulandris’s side of the family has said in court papers that the 29 paintings in the show had been donated to Ms. Goulandris’s Sirina foundation by Wilton Trading. Wilton’s founder Maria Goulandris, who was married to Basil’s older brother, donated the 29 works to Sirina in honor of the museum idea in 1992, according to court testimony by Maria’s son Peter John Goulandris.

Elise Goulandris died on July 25, 2000 at age 82.

Two months later, Ms. Zaimis said Mr. Koutsomallis came to her house and read her aunt’s will, including three pages she had written out by hand in 1997.

In it she distinguished between her assets that could not be moved, like her seven homes, and her “movables” like art, assigning Mr. Koutsomallis to “separate whatever he considers to be antiquarian objects of value that are suitable for a museum. These objects will devolve to the foundation,” she wrote. Everything else, she added, she wanted to go to six beneficiaries on her side of the family—including her sister Marie’s two daughters, Ms. Zaimis and Ms. Veroutis-Anastasadi, who also lives in Greece, and four other cousins.

Mr. Koutsomallis handed Ms. Zaimis an inventory listing Ms. Goulandris’s assets, which included houses and an array of household goods like cutlery. “Where are the valuable things, the paintings?” she said she asked him. That’s when she said she first heard about the sale and how the remaining art had funneled to the foundation.

Ms. Zaimis questioned whether postwar paintings by Jackson Pollock or Francis Bacon could be considered “antiquarian objects,” using the will’s parlance. To her, that phrase referred only to her aunt’s antiquities and antique furniture, not her paintings. Her concerns were dismissed.

She said she tried to talk to her sister and her cousins about the matter, but she said they were spooked by another line in Ms. Goulandris’s will that warned beneficiaries not to object to the decisions made by Mr. Koutsomallis, her estate executor, in divvying her assets. If they did, they could risk forfeiting their right to that contested asset.

She filed a civil lawsuit against him in Greece early the following year, claiming the paintings were wrongfully excluded from her aunt’s estate. The courts there said Switzerland had jurisdiction since Ms. Goulandris lived in Lausanne, so the case shifted to Lausanne.

Ezra Chowaiki PHOTO: ROBERT HUBER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Around the same time, Mr. Chowaiki—a dealer in New York known for selling blue-chip paintings by artists like Miró and Lichtenstein—said he got a tantalizing call from a friend who had heard that the Goulandris foundation in Athens was quietly looking to sell one of its masterpieces, van Gogh’s “Olive Pickers” for $70 million. According to the art dealer’s account, a few days before Christmas in 2001, Mr. Chowaiki said he and a billionaire client of his met Mr. Koutsomallis at a storage warehouse in Lausanne, where he entered a small room and saw the painting lying flat on a table, “like an autopsy,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, Mr. Chowaiki said he tried to whittle the price down, but he said the deal allegedly stalled at $55 million and Mr. Chowaiki walked away, disappointed.

The foundation’s lawyer Mr. Diserens disputes this account, saying in an email statement last week that Mr. Koutsomallis never tried to sell the van Gogh to Mr. Chowaiki, whose version of the story he called “pure calumny.”

Mr. Chowaiki said from 2001 on, he was aware of the Goulandris case, and he was pleased when a friend of Ms. Zaimis called him the following year, seeking his help. Mr. Chowaiki was told that Ms. Zaimis was looking for art experts to testify about the foundation’s activities, and she asked him if he might be willing to testify in Greek court about the alleged offer in Lausanne.

The dealer eventually did one better: After speaking with her regularly for nearly a year, he also offered to help pay Ms. Zaimis’s legal fees in exchange for securing first dibs to any paintings she might choose to sell if she won. “Would I have done this had I known what all it would become?” Mr. Chowaiki said later of their pact. “Who knows, but I’ve spent millions at this point, so I’m all in.”

Mr. Chowaiki said it took years before he or Ms. Zaimis could piece together the back story of the alleged $31.7 million sale in 1985. Even now, he said he doesn’t believe it ever happened.

In court proceedings in Lausanne in 2010, Mr. Goulandris’s relatives testified that the shipping mogul agreed to the sale; he had debts and needed cash.

Peter John Goulandris, the nephew on Basil Goulandris’s side and the former chairman of the porcelain maker Waterford Wedgwood, confirmed in court proceedings that he and his older sister Chryss Goulandris had received some of Wilton’s art holdings after their mother died in 2005. Messages left with Peter John Goulandris at the family office at Orion Shipping were not returned.

When Ms. Zaimis was given a chance to read this sale agreement for the first time in 2008 as part of the Swiss court proceedings, she declared the contract a fraud. The allegation of fraud triggered the regional court to launch a concurrent, criminal investigation into the matter. Last year, the Swiss public prosecutor’s office chose not to indict the foundation, citing a lack of evidence of fraud, according to a court clerk for the prosecutor’s office. Ms. Zaimis’s lawyers appealed the decision two months ago. Now, both sides are waiting to see whether the court drops the criminal case, files its own indictment or orders another prosecutor to further investigate. The civil case will continue no matter what, said Ron Soffer, Ms. Zaimis’ lawyer in Paris.

ENLARGE

Claude Monet’s 1894 “The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light (in Pink)” is part of one of the impressionist painter’s best-known series of light studies. It once hung beside a similar version in blue that Mr. Goulandris sold and now belongs to the J. Paul Getty Museum 

Three months ago, a report published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which helped break the Panama Papers leak, offered further clues to the fate of three more paintings Basil Goulandris allegedly sold. The report is based on documents leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca that allegedly helped create offshore tax havens for its wealthy clients. (The Wall Street Journal has not independently verified these documents.)​

According to the April 8 report, Mr. Goulandris’s only sister, Marie “Doda” Voridis, was the secret seller of three paintings put up for auction in 2005. It’s unclear exactly how she received them, but the works included a Pierre Bonnard that went unsold in Sotheby’s Feb. 8, 2005 sale in London, as well as a pair of Marc Chagall paintings that sold to anonymous buyers for $2.3 million and $2.5 million in the same auction. Ms. Voridis died last year. In the works’ ownership histories, Sotheby’s lists the works as having been owned by Basil Goulandris.

If these pieces were sold in the mid-1980s, as Mr. Goulandris’s relatives say, it’s unclear how the trio of paintings made it back into the collection of the sister, who decided to sell them five years after Ms. Goulandris died. If they were never sold off during Mr. Goulandris’s lifetime, as his niece alleges, they should have funneled to his widow’s estate.

The whereabouts of the rest remain unknown, at least publicly.

Back in Athens, Ms. Zaimis, who lives half an hour away from the museum site now under construction, says she is monitoring its development. But the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation Museum opening early next year hardly represents checkmate.

“I’m keeping my walls empty until my paintings come home to me,” she said.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

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Art | The $3 Billion Family Art Feud

By 

KELLY CROW

Updated June 30, 2016 6:56 p.m. ET