NEW YORK — A Russian billionaire who accused Sotheby’s of colluding with a Swiss art dealer to defraud him of tens of millions of dollars became tearful Friday as he testified that he discovered he had been part of a scam that is all too common on a ” art market that is more transparent.”
The emotional moment came as fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev, through an interpreter, gave two days of testimony in Manhattan federal court in support of his lawsuit against Sotheby’s.
Rybolovlev was once worth at least $7 billion and said he trusted his dealer, Yves Bouvier.
“So if you trust people, and I’m not one to trust easily, but if someone is a member of your family,” Rybolovlev said, lowering his head for a moment before wiping the tears from his eyes and continuing: “There is a moment when you start to trust someone completely and utterly.”
Rybolovlev is trying to hold Sotheby’s responsible for what his lawyers say is a loss of more than $160 million. His legal team said Bouvier pocketed the sum by buying famous works of art from Sotheby’s before selling them to Rybolovlev at inflated prices. In total, Rybolovlev spent approximately $2 billion on art between 2002 and 2014, while building a world-class art collection.
Under cross-examination, a lawyer for Sotheby’s got Rybolovlev to admit that he trusted his advisers and did not insist on seeing documents that might show where exactly his money was going, even as he bought art sometimes worth tens of millions of dollars.
In his testimony, Rybolovlev blamed shady practices in the leading art world for leaving him financially damaged.
“Because when the largest company in this industry with such a deep reputation takes these actions, it makes it incredibly difficult for clients like me, who have experience in business, to know what is going on,” he said, terminating supporting his lawyers’ arguments that Sotheby’s either knew – or should have known that Rybolovlev was being defrauded and informed him.
When asked by his lawyer why he sued Sotheby’s, Rybolovlev said: “So it’s not a money issue. Well, not just money. It is important that the art market becomes more transparent. Because… if the largest company in this industry is involved in these types of actions, customers don’t stand a 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 joined in an extensive fraud.
“Sotheby’s had choices, but they chose greed,” he said.
Rybolovlev claims he was deliberately misled by Bouvier and a London-based director of Sotheby’s when he bought 38 works of art.
Only four are at issue in the lawsuit, including Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” Latin for “Savior of the World,” which Rybolovlev’s lawyers say Bouvier bought from Sotheby’s for $83 million to create a to be resold to Rybolovlev the next day for more than 127 dollars. million. In 2017, Rybolovlev sold it through Christie’s for a historic $450 million, as it became the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.
In December, Bouvier’s lawyers announced that Bouvier had reached a settlement with Rybolovlev under undisclosed terms that ensure neither will comment on their previous disputes.
Bouvier’s Swiss lawyers, David Bitton and Yves Klein, said earlier this week that Bouvier “strongly objects to any accusation of fraud.”
They said the allegations against Bouvier in New York have been dismissed “by authorities around the world,” with all nine cases against him in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, Monaco and Geneva, Switzerland, dropped.
In 2018, Rybolovlev was included on a list the Trump administration released of 114 Russian politicians and oligarchs it said had ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
However, he was not on a list of Russian oligarchs punished after Russia attacked Ukraine, and Kornstein told jurors that his client, who studied medicine and became a cardiologist before switching to business, has not lived in Russia in 30 years .
