Dmitry Rybolovlev Loses Fraud Case Against Sotheby’s

Blue-chip auction house Sotheby’s on January 30 was cleared of charges that it had aided an independent dealer in defrauding Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. A ten-person jury in a Manhattan federal court deliberated for less than a day before handing down the verdict, which followed three weeks of testimony and exposed both the inner workings of Sotheby’s and the seemingly uninformed buying habits of Rybolovlev, who made his fortune selling potash fertilizer following the collapse of the Soviet Union. At issue in the civil case were four works: the ca.

1500Salvator Mundiattributed to Leonardo da Vinci; René Magritte’sLe domaine d’Arnheim, 1962; Gustav Klimt’sWasserschlangen II, 1907; and Amedeo Modigliani’sTête, 1911–12. Rybolovlev had sought to include eleven other works in the suit, but US District Judge Jesse Furman in March 2023dismissedclaims regarding these. The fertilizer magnate contended that Swiss dealer Yves Bouvier had worked closely with Sotheby’s expert Samuel Valette to inflate valuations for works purchased by Bouvier and offered to Rybolovlev.

Valette argued that he was unaware that Bouvier was not purchasing the works for himself. Sotheby’s additionally contended that Rybolovlev should not have relied solely on Bouvier’s advice without asking for documentation of the price paid by the Swiss dealer in buying work for him. In one instance, Bouvier bought theSalvator Mundifrom the auction house for $83 million in 2013 and sold it to Rybolovlev the next day for $127.5 million.

The oligarch eventually sold the work at auction to Saudi crown princeMohammed bin Salmanfor $450 million, the highest hammer price ever recorded for a painting. The work’sauthenticityhas since come into question.RelatedHEAD OF SAUDI ARABIA’S ALULA CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF MONEY LAUNDERINGHISTORIC CENTRE POMPIDOU STRIKE ENDS WITH AGREEMENT Bouvier, who was not a defendant in the case, maintained his innocence and in December reached a confidential settlement with Rybolovlev, who had pursued him for years in various courts around the world. That same month, the Geneva public prosecutor’s office announced that it was closing its case against Bouvier following the withdrawal of a criminal complaint by Rybolovlev’s attorneys.

Daniel Kornstein, a lawyer for Rybolovlev, said in a statement that the Sotheby’s case “achieved our goal of shining a light on the lack of transparency that plagues the art market,” additionally noting, “That secrecy made it difficult to prove a complex aiding and abetting fraud case.” For its part, the auction house in a statement said that the case had been colored by a “glaring lack of evidence” on the part of Rybolovlev and that the verdict had reaffirmed Sotheby’s commitment to the “highest standards of integrity, ethics and professionalism.”.