Hmm, strange mixup, since O’Connor died so long ago, and so young!
JCO is 85 now and keeps cranking things out. I still haven’t forgotten about that obnoxious fangirling she did over boxing, and the seemingly unwitting racism of Black Girl White Girl, but she’s so prolific that she says things of interest too.
There was something quite like this, at a somewhat smaller level, just a couple of years ago. An “art consultant” acquiring artwork for one of the ALDI heirs. With a considerable markup which he pocketed. Got to greedy, got caught, got a couple of years for it.
This sort of thing must be going on all of the time, all over the place.
That does sound flamiliar…
While the tone during Friday’s proceedings in the civil suit brought by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev remained collegial—after all, Sotheby’s attorney Marcus Asner was questioning the house’s head of private sales Samuel Valette for the second day—the questioning was decidedly more aggressive.
While Asner’s questions were nominally directed at Valette, it was clear that his real target was Yves Bouvier, the Swiss art dealer who Rybolovlev has accused of overcharging him by $1 billion, with Sotheby’s help, on blue-chip art purchased between 2010 and 2014.
Bouvier, who is not a party to the ongoing trial, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Rybolovlev. Courts in Hong Kong, Monaco, Singapore, and elsewhere have declined to hold a trial against Bouvier or dismissed charges against him. In December, the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office closed its case against Bouvier after he and Ryblovlev reached an agreement and the Russian billionaire withdrew the criminal complaint.
Still, evidence shown in court Friday seemed too blatant to call his dealings with Rybolovlev, or his business manager Mikhail Sazonov, above board.
In one example, an email presented to the jury from Bouvier to Sazonov dated Nov. 21, 2011, Bouvier said he had been negotiating with the owner of Rene Magritte’s Le Domaine d’Arnheim, and was fighting hard to get them down from their original asking price, $60 million. In the same email chain Bouvier asks if he is authorized to propose more than $40 million and says that a number as low as $42 million was “mission impossible.”
“I proposed $43.5 million with a deadline,” Bouvier wrote, adding that he’d wave his 2% fee if Rybolovlev still thought the picture too expensive.
But, according to testimony from Valette and emails shown to the jury, the sellers, who like Bouvier were negotiating through Sotheby’s, asked for $25 million, not $60 million. In fact, the seller had set the $25 million price, after two unsuccessful attempts by another Sotheby’s specialist, Hubert D’Ursel, to secure the sale at between $5 million and $9 million. …
Rather lovely, outside my budget though.
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This is refreshing. Family finds trove of art from Japan in attic of dead relative. Finds out some of it was registered as stolen in the FBI stolen art database. Turns the entire hoard over to the FBI. The Smithsonian packs it up very carefully and it is returned to Japan.
No one trying to make money off of it, no one claiming they should be paid for the parts not registered as stolen. Just all returned.
Welcome to our museum.
