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Home / European families / Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski sold his family's collection to Poland for €100 million, the…
Case file s834 · European families · 2016
2016
Adam Karol Czartoryski: Adam karol czartoryski
Adam Karol Czartoryski. Encodingbike. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
living; sale signed 29 December 2016; defamation suit reported 16 May 2018
Place
Kraków, Poland
Field
art collection, Princes Czartoryski Museum · Visual art and architecture on the timeline
Legal tradition
Polish foundation law; sale to the State Treasury; Liechtenstein foundation law
Historical event
Post-communist restitution in Poland
Religion
Adam Karol Czartoryski: Catholic (recorded as Spanish Roman Catholics on Wikipedia)

Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski sold his family's collection to Poland for €100 million, the money went to Liechtenstein, and he sued his daughter

The Czartoryski collection began with Princess Izabela Czartoryska's museum at Puławy, housed in the Temple of Memory, built from 1798 to 1801. In 1991 her descendant Adam Karol Czartoryski set up the Princes Czartoryski Foundation to hold the museum's collections in Kraków†. In mid-December 2016 the museum's entire managerial board resigned. It said the prince had lost its trust by trying to sell the collection and buildings to the state. On 29 December 2016 he and culture minister Piotr Gliński signed the sale: 86,000 artworks and a library of 250,000 items, including a Leonardo and a Rembrandt, for €100 million. About €85 million of the proceeds went to Le Jour Viendra, a foundation he set up in Vaduz, Liechtenstein†. His daughter Tamara said the plan from the start had been to move the money there and turn a charity into a private foundation from which her father could withdraw money. She was removed from the foundation council. Her father and the foundation's president, Maciej Radziwiłł, sued her for defamation in Warsaw. Radziwiłł denied her account. In April 2018 Poland's Supreme Audit Office (NIK) ordered a tax audit. Liechtenstein's foundation regulator replied on 17 September 2018 that its audit reports are not shared with foreign institutions. On 20 August 2018 the deputy culture minister asked a Warsaw district court to rule whether the transfer was lawful. No ruling was found†. The collection is now state property, held by the National Museum in Kraków.

What the law took from it

A charitable foundation that sells its assets can move the proceeds to a jurisdiction where neither the family nor the state can see the accounts.

Sources
  1. nik.gov.plGovernment record
  2. apollo-magazine.comPress
  3. dziennikpolski24.plPress
  4. mnk.plPress
  5. Wikipedia (Polish)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski sold his family's collection to Poland for €100 million, the money went to Liechtenstein, and he sued his daughter,” story s834, https://www.celebrity.estate/adam-karol-czartoryski-2016, updated 30 October 2026.

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