Lawyers for the heirs of Argentine football legend Diego Maradona said that the sale of the “Golden Ball” that the late star obtained in 1986, which is scheduled to take place during a public auction early next June in France, should be frozen. They pointed out that the ball found by an antiques dealer is legally theirs.
According to the five heirs, the award that Maradona received after being chosen as the best player in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which he received in November of the same year in Paris at the famous Lido nightclub, was stolen during a bank robbery in October 1989 in Naples.
The player’s family discovered only a few weeks ago that the award will be sold during a public auction that will be held on June 6 in the Neuilly-sur-Seine region near Paris.
The family quickly took immediate legal action to try to regain possession of the Ballon d’Or.
Lola Chonet, one of the family’s lawyers, said before the Nanterre judicial court, “The family is determined to recover this (Golden) Ball. The Argentine people are determined to recover this Ball.”
For his part, Arthur Gaulier, representative of the auction organizers, explained, “Attempting to claim ownership without filing a complaint, thirty-five years after the alleged theft, is an opportunistic approach that justice cannot condone.”
Lawyers for the Agot Auction House and the cup seller said on Thursday that the Maradona family did not provide clear evidence of the complaint filed at the time.
In a press statement, Maximilian Agot, director of the house that bears his name, stated that one of the “myths” circulating about the award says that Maradona forgot it at the Lido nightclub in Paris on the same evening at the award ceremony.
The former gallery owner and antiques dealer says that he acquired it at an auction in 2016 among a group of hundreds of prizes, many of which were of little value, before he realized after completing the purchase that one of the pieces could be Maradona’s Golden Ball.
The court will make its decision on May 30 to confirm whether or not the prize will be sold at auction.