A US federal jury has ruled in favour of Sotheby’s at a trial in which the Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev accused the auction house of defrauding him out of tens of millions of dollars in art sales.
Rybolovlev had accused Sotheby’s of conspiring with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier to trick him into paying inflated prices for four works including Salvator Mundi, a depiction of Christ attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that would become the most expensive artwork sold at auction.
Sotheby’s, which is privately held, had long maintained that it had “... strictly adhered to all legal requirements, financial obligations, and industry best practices during the transactions of these artworks”, had no knowledge of Bouvier’s alleged misconduct, and that it was not liable for his dealings with Rybolovlev.
Bouvier was not a defendant, and has maintained he did nothing wrong. Last month Bouvier and Rybolovlev reached a confidential settlement concerning all their disputes that involved proceedings in various jurisdictions. Bouvier’s lawyers said: “The final outstanding investigation into Yves Bouvier’s business dealings with Dmitry Rybolovlev started in Switzerland in 2017 and was closed on 6 December 2023 by the Office of the Attorney General of Geneva. The Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office stated that it conducted a number of hearings which did not provide any evidence to raise sufficient suspicion against Mr Bouvier.”
Rybolovlev was allowed to sue over Salvator Mundi even though his ownership had proven unusually profitable.
According to court papers, Bouvier bought the da Vinci for $83m in 2013 and sold it the next day to Rybolovlev for $127.5m. Rybolovlev went on to sell Salvator Mundi at Christie’s in 2017 for $450.3m, a record price for an artwork at auction.
The work was bought by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and had been planned to become the star attraction in a new Louvre gallery in Abu Dhabi. However, it has not gone on show as experts raised questions about its authenticity.
Rybolovlev is worth $6.4bn after building his fortune in potash fertiliser, according to Forbes magazine. He owns Ligue 1 football club AS Monaco and the Greek island of Skorpios where Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis in 1968
Daniel Kornstein, a lawyer for Rybolovlev, said the case “achieved our goal of shining a light on the lack of transparency that plagues the art market. That secrecy made it difficult to prove a complex aiding and abetting fraud case”.
Sotheby’s said the verdict reaffirmed its commitment to upholding the highest standards of integrity, ethics and professionalism, and reflected a “glaring lack of evidence” that it cheated Rybolovlev.
The case has been among the highest-profile art fraud disputes in recent years, offering a view into an often secretive industry where wealthy buyers sometimes don’t know who they are buying from.
Jurors in Manhattan federal court needed less than a day to reach a verdict, in a trial that lasted about three weeks.
In March last year, US district judge Jesse Furman let Rybolovlev pursue fraud-based claims over the da Vinci artwork, and works by Gustav Klimt, Rene Magritte and Amedeo Modigliani.
Rybolovlev originally sued over 15 pieces of world-class art for which he paid more than $1bn, and accused Bouvier of charging hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden markups.
Furman dismissed fraud-based claims over the other 11 works, including art from Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
With Reuters
