A respected British art dealer has been ordered to repay $4.99 million, plus damages, to a Qatari sheikh after he sold him seven “ancient” sculptures that later turned out to be forgeries.
In 2014 and 2015, Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah Al Thani purchased seven artifacts from London-based art dealer John Eskenazi for $4.99 million through his company Qatar Investment and Projects Holding Company, also known as QIQCO, Forbes reported.
Asian art expert Eskenazi, who has previously sourced ancient artwork for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Paris’s Louvre Museum, priced and sold the artifacts with the understanding they were up to 2,000 years old, per the Mail on Sunday.
According to court documents, each invoice contained a note saying: “I declare that to the best of my knowledge and belief the item detailed on this invoice is antique and therefore over one hundred years of age.”
Read more: Business Insider
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