NEW YORK (AP) — A Russian billionaire who accused Sotheby's of conspiring with a Swiss art dealer to defraud him of tens of millions of dollars broke down in tears Friday as he testified that he had discovered that he had been part of a fraud game that is all too common. “The art market needs to become more transparent.”
The emotional moment came as fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev testified through an interpreter for two days in a Manhattan federal court to support his lawsuit against Sotheby's.
Rybolovlev was once worth at least $7 billion and said he trusted his trader Yves Bouvier.
“So when you trust people, and I'm not a person who trusts easily, but when a person is like a family member,” Rybolovlev said as he lowered his head briefly before wiping tears from his eyes and continuing: ” There comes a point in time when you start to trust a person completely.”
Rybolovlev is trying to hold Sotheby's responsible for what his lawyers say was a loss of more than $160 million. His legal team said Bouvier pocketed the sum by buying famous works of art at Sotheby's before selling them to Rybolovlev at inflated prices. In total, Rybolovlev spent around $2 billion on art between 2002 and 2014 and built a world-class art collection.
Under cross-examination, a Sotheby's lawyer got Rybolovlev to admit that he trusted his advisers and did not insist on seeing documents that could have shown exactly where his money went, even when he bought art sometimes worth tens of millions of dollars was.
In his statement, Rybolovlev blamed opaque practices in the world of high-end art for causing him financial harm.
“Because when the largest company in this industry with such a good reputation takes such actions, it is incredibly difficult for clients like me, who have experience in business, to know what is going on,” he said, supporting the arguments his lawyers, who also did not represent Sotheby's, knew – or should have known – that Rybolovlev was being defrauded and notified him.
When asked by his lawyer why he sued Sotheby's, Rybolovlev said: “So it's not about money. Well, not just the money. It is important that the art market becomes more transparent. Because … when the largest company in this industry is involved in actions of this kind, customers have no chance.”
In an opening statement earlier this week, Sotheby's lawyer Sara Shudofsky said Rybolovlev was “trying to make an innocent party pay for what someone else did to him.”
Rybolovlev's lawyer, Daniel Kornstein, said in his opening statement that Sotheby's had engaged in an elaborate fraud.
“Sotheby's had a choice, but they chose greed,” he said.
Rybolovlev claims he was deliberately deceived by Bouvier and a London-based manager at Sotheby's when he purchased 38 works of art.
Only four are at issue in the trial, including Leonardo da Vinci's “Salvator Mundi,” Latin for “Savior of the World,” which Rybolovlev's lawyers say Bouvier bought for $83 million at Sotheby's, only to sell for more than $127 a day later Rybolovlev resell million. In 2017, Rybolovlev sold it through Christie's for a historic $450 million, making it the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.
In December, Bouvier's lawyers announced that Bouvier had reached an agreement with Rybolovlev under undisclosed terms that ensure neither would comment on their past disputes.
Bouvier's Swiss lawyers, David Bitton and Yves Klein, said earlier this week that Bouvier “strongly denies any allegations of fraud.”
They said the allegations against Bouvier in New York had been rejected “by authorities around the world” and that all nine cases brought against him in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, Monaco and Geneva, Switzerland, had been dropped.
In 2018, Rybolovlev was included on a list released by the Trump administration of 114 Russian politicians and oligarchs allegedly linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, he was not on the list of Russian oligarchs sanctioned after Russia's attack on Ukraine, and Kornstein told jurors that his client, who studied medicine and became a cardiologist before moving into business, had not been there for 30 years lived more in Russia.