Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Kaleun96, post: 24486786, member: 92635&quot;]It refers to Informant #2, without any doubt. As myself and others on NF mentioned, the capitlised &quot;Informant&quot; is being used as a proper noun and when a noun follows the use of a proper noun in this way, it&#039;s pretty clear that they refer to the same individual. For example: &quot;Sam wanted to go to the zoo, when he asked his parents if they could take him, they said they could only take Sam if he did his chores&quot;.</p><p><br /></p><p>This isn&#039;t in dispute, it&#039;s not ambiguous, it&#039;s very clear standard use of the English language. It is further reinforced by the fact that whenever a different informant is being talked about, the affidavit refers to that informant by their number.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I agree that this is less clear. My assumption is that it refers to the same event but regardless it matters little for the discussion at hand. Whether Informant #2 told Beale and Vecchi about the provenance being fake just the one time or on two separate occasions doesn&#039;t really affect the accusation that they attempted to pay this person for a provenance this person said was false.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It seems that Beale did pay someone else for the provenance but that is irrelevant to whether Beale attempted to pay Informant #2 after being informed by this person that the provenance was false. The affidavit clearly states the sequence of events as:</p><ol> <li>Informant #2 tells Beale and Vecchi the provenance is false</li> <li>Beale and Vecchi offer Informant #2 100,000 CHF to sign documents attesting that the provenance is real</li> <li>Informant #2 refused to sign these documents</li> </ol><p>There is no ambiguity in the affidavit as to that particular sequence of events, though of course they are still accusations and not indisputable facts. Given this sequence of events, why would Beale and Vecchi offer 100,000 CHF to someone who is telling them the provenance is not real? If proven, the offer of payment after being told the provenance was fake by the same individual would demonstrate undeniably that Beale knew the provenance was fake. There is no other explanation.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s possible but it is contradicted by the affidavit. If that was the case, Informant #2 wouldn&#039;t &quot;refuse&quot; to sign the documents, they would simply have just told Beale the provenance was fake and nothing more. The refusal can only mean that they were presented with an immediate action to take, not a hypothetical one. If the offer was simply &quot;well if you do find evidence it&#039;s correct, we&#039;ll pay you for it&quot; then I would think Informant #2 would be considered to have mislead the authorities in their statement, either willingly or unwillingly.</p><p><br /></p><p>And that doesn&#039;t seem like a simple misunderstanding given Informant #2 has apparently told the authorities that they were &quot;asked to sign&quot;. Again, if this was more of a hypothetical offer in the event of new evidence of the provenance coming to light, the informant wouldn&#039;t have been asked to sign a document as proof of the provenance. They would be paid for providing the evidence, signing a document attesting to that evidence would be superfluous unless the evidence was not provable by a third-party, in which case one must ask one&#039;s self how Informant #2 would come across evidence that proves the provenance is genuine, after already stating it is fake, and in which this evidence cannot stand on its own and must be accompanied by a signed document attesting to it?</p><p><br /></p><p>It might make sense if Informant #2 already knew the provenance was genuine to begin with. For example, they had seen the coin in the collection of this person but had no physical evidence of it being in such a collection. In that case it might be expected that a signed statement would suffice. However, this explanation completely falls apart when Informant #2 is starting out by saying there is no such evidence. Unless they go to a hypnotist and regain some long lost memory, this is not a likely explanation.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Sure, but that&#039;s not what Beale is being charged with. He&#039;s not being charged with paying someone to sign a document that this person believes is the truth. He&#039;s being charged with offering someone money to sign a document stating as fact something he knows to be false. Before you say &quot;maybe he thought it was true&quot;, I would redirect you to my earlier question of why Beale would try to pay someone 100,000 CHF for stating as true something this person has already told Beale is not true.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in