i am grateful that my father never really knew the extent of how he was duped.

so, i'm currently sitting on flight 317, london to zurich, to go and look at the paintings which were willed to beatrice by her parents. and my role really is to just see if the doubts that beatrice had are in any wayjustified. i think the most important thing is that, during my. grandfather's life, - he believed it was a real — an original that he'd bought. and that's the most important thing — at the end of the day, i everybody would love it to be authentic, but it doesn't takei away from the style, which does replicate | lissitsky's.

zaks would present buyers with reports from a lab in germany confirming the pigments and other materials matched those used in lissitsky�*s lifetime. but this alone isn't enough to prove the painting is a genuine lissitsky. so we are going to get some more analysis done in an independent lab. i'm drjilleen nadolny. i'm the director of the uk

branch of art discovery here in london. and we've been working with looking at russian avant—garde forgeries for the last 12 years since the business was founded. my name is denis and i'm the director of hephaestus analytical, and we specialise in developing technologies to eliminate forgery from the art market. so we hope that al becomes a scalable solution that, together with connoisseurship, together with chemical analysis, is able to eliminate the vast majority of forgeries from the market. one of the problems that's commonly seen, the word forgery gets tossed around all the time and it makes it sound very cloak and dagger, very criminal, very intentional. and sometimes it is. in other cases, it's not so criminal, it's not so intentional. it's more a case of things

get misattributed. so what we're going to do is use a high resolution image of the subject's painting, run it through the machine, through the various algorithms that we have that allow it to be compared to a body of 20 original, bona fide lissitskys that we know are real. if that painting fits inside that cloud, inside that contour, we can say with 99% confidence that the painting is authentic. if it's outside of that cloud, we can be fairly confident that the painting is a forgery. so, when looking at this painting, one thing we're going to want to look at is the signature because signatures are always important in both real and inauthentic works. so, here, it looks very much like the signature was put on at the same time

as the paint. it kind of intermingles with the underlying paint. so you see a little bit of mixing going on. no signs at all that its later additions. looking at the painting, we found a whole range of pigments that would have been perfectly acceptable for lissitsky�*s time — it was an oil paint so, superficially, the object looked good for that first—level check. now we should be able to get a result. and the results are in. that's interesting. immediately, with the uv light, what we found on the microscope were these fragments of fibres embedded in the surface. let me see if i can pull them up. ok, so if you look here.

when you're working with material, there's always environmental things that interact with the paint. it's, you know, people... people clean their brushes or people's jumpers have fuzzy fibres. yeah. if it's just on the surface, fine. but it actually... where you don't see it here, it's going under the paint. so these particular fibres that we found in the painting were treated with substances that were developed in the early part of the 20th century but were really first commercialised and brought onto the market only after the world wars. being able to identify them was, right there, a very hard indicator that would even stand up were we needed to take this to court. it's like looking at something that should have been 18th—century and there's a flatscreen tv in the background. it's not possible. you can't have it. it doesn't work.

so, by finding them in the substance, we know this isn't an early 20th—century painting. on this simplified graph, it's quite clear that the magenta line representing the subject painting is really far away from the expected distribution of what we'd expect from a authentic lissitsky. therefore, i'm afraid the painting is a forgery. do i still look the same? beautiful. first of all, shock, anger that the parents who were genuine enthusiastic collectors had been duped like that.

it would be nice to know that the people who duped, willingly or unwillingly, my parents would own up to some sort of responsibility of taking a lot of money from my parents and giving them something that is clearly not what they purported it to be. now, what can be done, and this is worth going to court, we've asked for an advice from jim maxwell. he is a leading british lawyer in the area of art and cultural. first of all, he reminded us that the art market is largely unregulated. so the best way to protect yourself from forgeries is to always seek advice before a purchase. then he also reminded us of the authenticity guarantee, which means that, if you buy something that is proven to be a fake, you can return it to the seller and be refunded. but there is also the period of limitation — six years

in the uk or ten years in switzerland. that means that, after that time, you cannot be refunded, even if you bought a fake. there are also exemptions such as fraud. if one is defrauded, then the limitation period starts ticking only from the moment when the victim discovers that they have been defrauded. but this is incredibly hard to prove. and the lawyers say that, in cases like this, chances for successful court action are rather low. our next step was to try and find leonid zaks. we have tried to contact mr zaks in many different ways. our next step was to try and find leonid zaks. we have tried to contact mr zaks in many different ways. now we are here in israel and we hope to meet him here in person. we searched through the israeli phone books and databases and found only five

leonid zakses in all possible spellings. dialling tone leonid zaks doesn't ring a bell? two of them are already dead. one is in a critical condition. another one is in a nursing home. so there was only one left. we paid a visit to the address. a woman opened the door and told us that leonid zaks living there was not the person we were looking for and definitely not an art collector. and israel is the place where mr zaks vanishes. two weeks before the film was due to go out, i suddenly

got a message from leonid zaks. he said he wanted to talk. ringing tone was this finally our chance to get the real story of the zaks collection?

so no apologies, no explanation and no new light on the zaks affair.

we know that several works from the zaks collection are on the market right now, being offered to private clients. that means that somebody can be paying millions of pounds for these works. so, we're often asked, why bother? what's the big deal? we're looking at overpriced pieces of art that rich people buy. so what if a few are wrong? beyond that, it goes to the public interest as well. public money is spent to acquire things for museums. students go to school to learn about objects that are held up as authentic and representative of the historic record of a particular culture. public money is spent hunting down art forgeries and art forgers when they do their work. so there's so much damage that's done that's completely away from the lives of the rich people. and wasting their money is the common argument why it doesn't matter — it matters

to us as a culture. this is our historical record. and if we allow this to happen, we're destroying our own past. the minneapolis institute of art owns two paintings from the zaks collection. one is said to be a work by the ukrainian artist alexandra exter. the other is a mysterious work called the clockmaker by the russian artist ivan kliun. for a few months, we have been exchanging emails with the minneapolis institute. they told us they would conduct their own investigation into kliun�*s painting. they didn't share the result with the bbc... ..but the painting has now been removed from display. and on the institute�*s website, the painting is now only attributed to ivan kliun.

the description now includes information from the bbc that this painting comes from the zaks collection. and where previously the website said the institute had reviewed the paintings documentation, now it stresses that the data may not have been reviewed and may be inaccurate or incomplete. this is the painting that appeared in the background of two recent hollywood films. we asked the creators of both oppenheimer and the wonderful story of henry sugar if they would like to comment. they haven't responded. another painting from the zaks collection, attributed to the ukrainian artist alexandra exter, is in the cleveland museum of art. its curators expressed interest in the results of our investigation, but declined to comment. we have found out that one more zaks collection painting is in the possession of the albertina museum in vienna.

called genoa, it was also attributed to exter. the museum has told us that they conducted their own analysis. the painting is not on display. this brings us to the last step in proving if a painting is real — expert opinion. the bbc has obtained records showing that both museum curators and art experts helped mr zaks promote his collection. we tried to track some of them down.

he laughs sarcastically the bbc has tried to interview mrs railing. she agreed to meet me at the pub and she allowed me to record our conversation. i see. we found that many articles

from the incorm members substituted provenance paperwork in the catalogues of the galerie orlando in zurich. many of these articles accompanied works from the zaks collection. so i asked mrs railing about this collection in more detail. i see.

we have managed to interview tatiana kotovich, an art historian from belarus. she wrote several articles on the history of the zaks collection. in her articles, she mentioned moses zaks, the alleged founder of the collection. as we have already shown, there is no evidence of this in the archives. we spoke via zoom. mrs kotovich was in vitebsk. zoom calling tone

did you see that painting? what did you think about it?

hello. slowly but surely, the weather is going to turn a little bit drier, but not an awful lot warmer as we head towards the end of the week. high pressure is tantalizingly close — sitting to the west of the uk, but still far enough away that weather systems can move in around the top of that area of high pressure — bringing cloud, bringing outbreaks of rain. that's exactly what we're going to see through the day on thursday ahead of that cold, frosty start, but we will see some spells of sunshine. that will hold on across southern counties of england, but further north, it's a story of increasing clouds, some outbreaks of rain. rain for a good part of the day across scotland, some patchy rain for northern ireland. temperatures just a little bit up on where they have been recently, eight to 15 degrees. now through thursday night, we'll see clouds and increasingly light and patchy rain pushing southwards. behind that, a northerly wind kicks in — a mix of clear spells and showers to take us into the first part of friday.

so this weather system easing its way through, clearing southwards with northerly winds behind. you can see quite a few isobars squeezing together on the chart, particularly across the northeast of scotland. so here it is going to be windy through the day on friday, particularly around some coasts. it's a day of sunny spells and showers. some of the showers could be on the heavy side, perhaps the showers most frequent across the eastern half of the uk, not as many showers further west. temperatures, six to eight degrees in northern scotland, elsewhere, 11—15 degrees. now into the weekend, this area of high pressure finally makes its move building across the uk. but brisk winds still affecting eastern coastal counties with potentially quite a lot of cloud, maybe even some showery rain. best chance of any sunshine out towards the west. that's where we'll have the highest of the temperatures, up to around 13, 14 degrees. but it will actually be quite chilly for some eastern parts, particularly for north sea coasts. now, as we get into sunday, again, we'll see clouds, some showery rain perhaps spinning a little bit further

west this time. the lowest temperatures always closest to these north sea coast, maybe some places stuck in single digits, ii for newcastle and for hull. but further west, with some sunshine, northern ireland could see the highest temperatures, 16, maybe 17 degrees. nothing particularly warm in the outlook for next week. often dry, there will be some showers.

live from washington. this is bbc news. the us house speaker finally sets a date for a long—awaited vote on billions of dollars in aid for ukraine and israel. and as lawmakers weigh those new bills, the bbc speaks to ukraine's prime minister. and israel's western allies are urging restraint as the country considers its response to last weekend's unprecedented attacks by iran.

hello, i'm carl nasman. after months of stalling, the us house of representatives will finally move ahead with a vote on an aid package for ukraine — along with several other bills, including funding for israel and the indo—pacific. house speaker mikejohnson had delayed bringing legislation to the house floor amid republican opposition to funding for kyiv. his new proposed foreign aid package splits funding for israel, taiwan, and ukraine into three separate bills, with $61 billion in aid for ukraine and regional partners, $26 billion in support for israel, and $8 billion for taiwan and other us allies in the indo—pacific region. the bills are something house republican french hill would support, saying they're in america's national security. it's a fundamental tenet to improve national security. i would rather have training

dollars for 71—year—olds