A jury in a civil trial in New York decided in favor of Sotheby’s on Tuesday, rejecting a Russian oligarch’s claim that the auction house had helped a Swiss dealer who he said defrauded him out of tens of millions of dollars in high-end art sales.
The oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, had accused Sotheby’s of being in on a plot in which, he said, the dealer Yves Bouvier posed as an art adviser negotiating sales on Rybolovlev’s behalf when, in reality, he was secretly acting as an art dealer, buying works at Sotheby’s before flipping them to his client.
In the resales, Bouvier at times increased the prices by tens of millions of dollars.
Whatever the dealer did with the art after he bought it was none of the auction house’s business, the Sotheby’s lawyers had argued.
If anyone were to blame for buying overpriced art, it was Rybolovlev himself, according to Sotheby’s lawyers, who said the Russian businessman was at fault for not protecting himself against the dealer’s actions.
Persons:
Dmitry Rybolovlev, Yves Bouvier, Bouvier, Rybolovlev
Locations:
New York, Sotheby’s, Swiss, Russian