Russian Billionaire Weeps As He Seeks $160-M From Sotheby’s

A Russian billionaire who accused Sotheby’s of teaming up with a Swiss art dealer to cheat him out of tens of millions of dollars became tearful while testifying about discovering he’d been part of a con game too common in an “art market that needs to be more transparent,” Larry Neumeister reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The emotional moment came as fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev, speaking through an interpreter, completed two days of testimony in Manhattan federal court to support his lawsuit against Sotheby’s. I Photo: ajay_suresh Flickr

The emotional moment came as fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev, speaking through an interpreter, completed two days of testimony in Manhattan federal court to support his lawsuit against Sotheby’s.

Once worth at least $7 billion, Rybolovlev said he trusted his dealer, Yves Bouvier.

“So when you trust people, and I’m not a person who trusts easily, but when a person is like a member of your family,” Rybolovlev said as he dropped his head briefly before wiping tears from his eyes.

“There is a point in time and that you start to completely and utterly trust a person,” he continued.

Rybolovlev is trying to hold Sotheby’s responsible for what his lawyers said was the loss of over $160 million. His legal team said Bouvier pocketed the sum by buying famous artworks from Sotheby’s before selling them to Rybolovlev at marked-up prices.

In all, Rybolovlev spent about $2 billion on art from 2002 to 2014 as he built a world-class art collection. In his testimony, Rybolovlev blamed murky practices in the blue-chip art world for leaving him damaged financially.

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