Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev on Tuesday lost a New York federal court lawsuit in which he had accused the Sotheby’s auction house of helping an art buyer defraud the oligarch by having him grossly overpay for various pieces of art.
A jury after several hours of deliberations found for Sotheby’s on all counts in Rybolovlev’s civil suit. The case related to more than $100 million in purchases the 57-year-old fertilizer magnate made through art buyer Yves Bouvier.
Bouvier for more than a decade had acted as the billionaire’s agent, helping him buy 38 masterworks for more than $2 billion.
Rybolovlev’s suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said he believed that Bouvier was conducting “hard-fought negotiations with sellers” on his behalf, when in reality, he was inflating the actual sales prices by nearly 100%.
The suit said Sotheby’s, as a broker for the transactions, helped Bouvier “justify the fraudulent prices he charged” Rybolovlev’s companies Accent Delight International Limited and Xitrans Finance Limited.
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“It knew the actual prices Bouvier paid to the sellers and the fraudulently inflated prices Bouvier induced Plaintiffs to pay to him,” the suit said.
Among the four artworks that were the subject of the trial was the Leonardo da Vinci painting “Salvator Mundi,” which Bouvier purchased from Sotheby’s for $83 million only to sell it a day later to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million. Rybolovlev later sold the piece at an auction through Christie’s in 2017 for $450.3 million, a record price for a painting.
At trial, Sotheby’s lawyer Sara Shudofsky told jurors that Rybolovlev was “trying to make an innocent party pay for what somebody else did to him.”
“Sotheby’s didn’t know anything about those lies,” Shudofsky said. “Sotheby’s had no knowledge of and didn’t participate in any misconduct.”
After the verdict on Tuesday in its favor, the auction house in a statement said the decision “reaffirms Sotheby’s long-standing commitment to upholding the highest standards of integrity, ethics, and professionalism in all aspects of the art market.”
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