Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev takes Sotheby's to trial over $2 billion art-buying spree
Rybolovlev told a Manhattan jury the auction house helped a Swiss dealer overcharge him by more than $1 billion across dozens of paintings, including a Leonardo that later became the world's most expensive.
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev went to trial against Sotheby's in a Manhattan federal court in January 2024, accusing the auction house of helping Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier defraud him across a roughly $2 billion, 12-year art-buying spree, according to Bloomberg and Euronews coverage of the case.
Rybolovlev's lawyers argued Sotheby's assisted Bouvier by producing inflated valuations for artworks that helped conceal markups Bouvier was secretly adding as he negotiated purchases on Rybolovlev's behalf while, unknown to his client, acting as the actual seller, Euronews reported. The trial centered on four works, including Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi," a painting that later sold at auction for a record price, making it the most expensive painting ever sold according to Bloomberg's reporting on the case background.
Figures on the scale of the alleged fraud varied across coverage: Rybolovlev claimed losses exceeding $160 million in the New York trial, while broader reporting on his dispute with Bouvier referenced overcharges upwards of $1 billion across 38 artworks in total — the two figures describe different scopes of the allegations (the Sotheby's trial specifically versus the full Bouvier dispute) and are reported here as given rather than reconciled into one number.
How the case reached a jury
Rybolovlev, whose net worth Bloomberg put at roughly $6.4 billion, had for years accused Bouvier of posing as a trusted art adviser while secretly operating as a dealer who bought pieces at one price and charged Rybolovlev a marked-up price plus a 2% commission on top, according to Bloomberg's account of the underlying dispute. Rybolovlev and Bouvier settled their own separate legal disputes out of court in late 2023, Euronews reported, leaving Sotheby's as the remaining defendant when the Manhattan trial opened in January 2024.
The verdict
A New York jury cleared Sotheby's on January 31, 2024, rejecting Rybolovlev's claims that the auction house aided and abetted Bouvier's alleged fraud, according to Bloomberg and Euronews. Rybolovlev's attorney, Daniel Kornstein, said after the verdict that the secrecy built into the art market made it difficult to prove a complex aiding-and-abetting case, and called for reforms to market transparency, Bloomberg reported. Sotheby's said the ruling reaffirmed its commitment to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by Bloomberg and Euronews of a trial covered as it happened by the Financial Times and other outlets. It restores a story originally published on this site in January 2024; figures are as reported at the time.