Gant and Siddique were found guilty last week by a jury of two counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception and one of attempting to obtain a financial advantage by deception involving the three artworks. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years' jail. The Crown's case was that Gant and art conservator Mohamed Aman Siddique, who trained at London's Courtauld​ Institute of Art and Chelsea College of Arts, had been part of a joint criminal enterprise in Australia's biggest art fraud. Siddique would create the artworks at his Easey Street, Collingwood, studio and Gant would sell them. Mr Wraight, for Gant, asked Justice Croucher on Tuesday what had happened to the paintings since last Thursday's guilty verdicts were handed down, saying he hoped they were not being used as a coffee table by police. Crown prosecutor Susan Borg said the paintings were being held in a police storage unit until the case was finalised. Justice Croucher said he would be asking Ms Borg on July 28 - when Gant and Siddique will appear for a pre-sentence hearing - what should happen to the paintings. Gant, who was charged in 1993 with deception for selling a John Perceval​ artwork he did not own but was later acquitted, has featured in a number of high-profile court cases over the years involving fake paintings by famous Australian artists. He was linked in one 2014 NSW Supreme Court case to the alleged sale of fake Whiteleys, fake Albert Tuckers, fake Charles Blackmans, fake Robert Dickersons and a fake Russell Drysdale. During Gant's Victorian Supreme Court trial, Ms Borg told the jury, which was not aware of his previous bankruptcies, that the art fraud had its origins after Gant had purchased an authentic Brett Whiteley painting, View From the Sitting Room Window, Lavender Bay, at auction in March 2007 for $1.65 million and had it delivered to Mr Siddique's Collingwood studio a month later. The Crown case was that this authentic Whiteley painting was used as a template to create fake Whiteley paintings. Art experts were divided during the trial as to the authenticity of the paintings. Melbourne University associate professor Robyn Sloggett and Vanessa Kowalski, the university's conservator of art at the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, examined the Blue Lavender Bay and the Orange Lavender Bay paintings and found that stylistically the artworks had a large number of inconsistencies with known works by Brett Whiteley, who died of a heroin overdose in 1992. But John Playfoot, who had been hired by Gant to sell Orange Lavender Bay, told the jury he believed it was a real Whiteley. Claiming to have bought and sold many Whiteleys for clients over the years, including the My Armchair painting which sold in November 2013 for $3.927 million, Mr Playfoot said he had had the Orange Lavender Bay, which he "absolutely loved", hanging in his house at one stage. At his wife's urging, Mr Playfoot invited a number of art experts - Chris Deutscher, his business partner Damian Hackett, the then Sotheby's Australia boss Tim Crawford and his colleague Geoffrey Smith - to his house to view the painting and they had given it the thumbs up. But one person not as quick to give her seal of approval was Whiteley's widow, Wendy, who believed both the Orange and Blue Lavender Bay paintings were fakes.
Police have assured the judge presiding over Australia's biggest art fraud case that two of the paintings in question are not “being used as a coffee table.” Melbourne art dealer Mohamed Aman Siddique​ and art conservator Peter Gant were found guilty of obtaining a financial advantage by deception and attempting to obtain a financial advantage by deception after selling three fake Brett Whiteley paintings for more than AUS3m. The “coffee table” comment came as the verdicts were handed down. The paintings are being held in police storage and their fate will be decided when Gant and Siddique are sentenced.