The dispute between the art collector Dmitri Rybolovlev and broker Yves Bouvier is rippling out on both sides of the Atlantic as both sides enter the discovery period seeking documents and witnesses. Some of Bouvier assets and bank accounts have been frozen and dealers, curators and lawyers who were involved in the deals are all nervously examining their paperwork to see whether they will be implicated in the developing storm.

Dmitri Rybolovlev at a Monaco AS football match.

Yves Bouvier

Forbes have conducted an examination of the situation as it stands which is printed below :-

Billionaire Rybolovlev vs Yves Bouvier by Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes, 3/12/2015

“Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev had decided to send off a tough 2014 in New York City. The Monaco-based billionaire had been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons after a Swiss judge awarded his ex-wife Elena $4.5 billion in their seven-year divorce battle. An avid art collector, Rybolovlev decided to spend New Year’s Eve with Sandy Heller, Steve Cohen’s well-known art adviser. As they exchanged war stories, one particular tale made his jaw drop: it was about a beautiful Nude by Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani that Cohen sold for a juicy $93.5 million to a mystery buyer. What Heller didn’t know was that behind the veil of anonymity stood Rybolovlev, fuming internally on that December 31. Rybolovlev had paid his trusted friend and art broker Yves Bouvier $118 million for the piece, more than $22 million above what he just found out the market value should’ve been, including the fee. Not one to sit around, the oligarch went for the jugular, filing a criminal complaint in the Principality of Monaco for fraud and money laundering only nine days later. In what promises to be the biggest art scandal of 2015, Bouvier was ambushed by eight police officers who took him into custody this February, tricked by Rybolovlev himself as they were set to discuss payment terms for a masterpiece my Mark Rothko. He’s currently out on bail.

The anecdote about Steve Cohen’s Modigliani comes straight out of the criminal complaint received on January 12, 2015 by Monaco’s Palais de Justice, and was confirmed by source close to the matter. While Bouvier may not be a household name in the U.S., the accusations and ensuing arrest reverberated across the European art market, where Bouvier runs a set of luxury warehouses across Geneva, Luxembourg, and Singapore where the world’s billionaires store their art, along with jewels, fine wines, and other luxury goods legally in tax-free zones.

Bouvier is accused of fraud and complicity with money laundering along with an accomplice, Tania Rappo, and a third person who hasn’t been immediately identified according to Monaco General Prosecutor Jean-Pierre Dreno, who didn’t respond to Forbes’ requests for comment. The embattled Swiss is out on bail, set at €10 billion and to be paid in three installments, and is ready for war.

He told Swiss publication Le Temps that Rybolovlev owes his company “tens of millions of euros,” while claiming that the oligarch set him up after failing to cough up the cash for Rothko’s No. 6 – Violet, Green, and Red. “[Rybolovlev] couldn’t pay the balance of the last painting he bought from my company, the most beautiful Rothko in the world.” Invited by the buyer to chat, Bouvier “fell into an ambush” as he was detained and handcuffed by eight police officers.

In the shady world of art, private transactions are amongst the most opaque, which is exactly what this case is about. Bouvier, who takes credit in having built Rybolovlev’s collection into “one of the finest in the world,” admits to having worked with the oligarch for ten years, having sold him forty “major works,” reportedly from artists including Picasso, Gauguin, Degas, and even a controversial Da Vinci. Specifically, Rybolovlev’s family trust (which controls his collection) claims Bouvier defrauded them by taking a broker’s commission of 2% while charging an illegal, and hyperbolic, markup, using offshore companies to disguise his interventions.

Two of the transactions specifically singled out in the complaint are the Modigliani and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi painted around 1500. While Bouvier is accused of illegally pocketing nearly $25 million on Steve Cohen’s Modigliani, with the Da Vinci—which he’s accused of buying for $75 to $80 million before flipping it to Rybolovlev for $127.5 million including fees—he’s said to have personally received as much as $52.5 million. “I’ve never been a broker,” Bouvier defended himself, “my company was the seller […] and the alleged commissions are not commissions but administrative costs,” he says, adding that in ten years, he’d only spoken to Rybolovlev “five times directly […] he was never a friend.”

Bouvier, of course, denies all accusations, claiming to have found out about the complaint as he was arrested. An art market insider explained to Forbes that it’s common for intermediaries to take their cut directly from the selling price, which in most cases isn’t illegal, unless certain conditions are violated. Forbes reached out to three different lawyers connected with Bouvier (David Bitton, Luc Brossollet, and Charles Lecuyer) but wasn’t able to get a response.

A major player in the art world, Bouvier is well-known for operating free ports in Geneva, Luxembourg, and Singapore. Through his Natural Le Coultre, they are the largest art operator in Geneva with a 22,000 square meter state-of-the-art facility that offers art storage, transport, and favorable tax conditions, and sometimes no taxes at all. At Geneva, reports indicate warehouses hold $100 billion worth of art essentially beyond the taxman’s eyes. Bouvier was also behind €150 million arts-park named R4 in Paris, and was also courting the Chinese government to set up a freeport in Beijing.

The King of free ports, as the Swiss media have dubbed him, Bouvier was embroiled in a similar legal scandal in 2008, when he was connected to a group that tricked an aging collector into selling a piece by Russian-born French artist Chaim Soutine that was then flipped to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. A suite filed by the heirs of Canadian Lorette Jolles Shefner claims she was misled into selling Piece of Beef for $1 million in the Spring of 2004 by two art experts who, a few months later, sold it to the National Gallery for nearly twice the price. Bouvier was “acting in concert [with the experts] to disguise the true ownership” of works of art as part of the fraudulent scheme, court documents revealed.

Rybolovlev has turned up the legal pressure on Bouvier. Beyond getting him arrested in Monaco, the oligarch’s legal team, headed by Tetiana Bersheda, got Singapore’s High Court to impose a $500 million freeze on Bouvier’s assets, his MEI Invest Limited, and supposed accomplice Tania Rappo. In Geneva, public prosecutor Jean-Bernanrd Schmid conducted a search in Natural Le Coultre’s headquarters and a gallery looking for documents related to the Modigliani and Da Vinci transactions. Rybolovlev is operating through the two holding companies that own the art collection, Accent Delight International and Xitrans Finance.

In the tight-knit world of art dealers and mega-buyers, where insider information is the name of the game, Bouvier’s case could be prove to be a game changer, as it potentially pits collectors against brokers, putting inherent conflicts of interest in the spotlight. At the same time, Rybolovlev is playing a high-stakes game, as a sophisticated collector and global businessman of his stature is not one who doesn’t understand the risks he’s taking. His lawyer claims other “victims” of Mr. Bouvier have already approached them, while the embattled King of the free ports believes he will clear his name in a Monaco court. Whatever happens the impact could be permanent.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2015/03/12/steve-cohens-modigliani-in-the-middle-of-an-art-market-war-billionaire-rybolovlev-vs-yves-bouvier/