Art critic Sgarbi cleared of authenticating fake paintings

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 30 - Art critic Vittorio Sgarbi was cleared Wednesday of authenticating fake paintings as genuine works by the late neo-avant-garde painter Gino de Dominicis.
    But the preliminary hearings judge sent 19 other people implicated in the case to trail starting December 21.
    De Dominicis (Ancona, 1947 - Rome, 1998) was a controversial protagonist of Italian art after the Second World War.
    Italy's crack art cops, the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, certified that the works in question were counterfeit.
    Sgarbi, who is also a prominent political polemicist, was fully acquitted in the case. (ANSA).