Bouvier Affair
Since beginning legal proceedings against Bouvier in 2015, authorities have dismissed lawsuits filed by Rybolovlev in Singapore, Hong Kong, New York, Monaco, and Geneva.
Before 2015, Bouvier was primarily known in the market as a leading art dealer[6] and curator through his company, Natural Le Coultre, and as a major shareholder and promoter of the freeport concept.
[7][8] Although Bouvier is not the primary defendant, court documents from 2013 accuse him of having acted "in concert" with several experts "to disguise the true ownership" of pieces of art in order to defraud the Shefner estate.
[13] In March 2015, Catherine Hutin-Blay, the step daughter of Pablo Picasso from his second wife Jacqueline, filed a complaint in Paris alleging that 58 separate works had been stolen from her.
"[22] In February 2016 French newspaper Le Point revealed that Hutin-Blay had stored 79 Picasso works including numerous portraits of her mother, at the Geneva freeports.
These messages suggested that Rybolovlev's legal team was working in concert with officers in Monaco and France to pressure Bouvier, using Hutin-Blay's allegations of art theft.
The discovery of these communications suggested that there was a coordinated attempt to manipulate legal processes in multiple jurisdictions, further deepening the scandal surrounding the entire affair.
[26] This decision followed the emergence of new evidence, including digital records and email exchanges that implicated Bouvier in the unauthorized sale of over 60 Picasso pieces from the collection of Catherine Hutin-Blay.
Investigators pointed to discrepancies in valuations and hidden details about the provenance, implying that Bouvier may have deliberately inflated prices while concealing the artworks' origins.
[26] In late 2015, it emerged that Bouvier has been investigated by the authorities in Liechtenstein on suspicion of money laundering, in one instance related to a forged Max Ernst work that is alleged to have been created by Wolfgang Beltracchi.
[27] In September 2017, Bouvier was under criminal investigation by Swiss authorities amid allegations that he may have evaded more than 100 million Euros in taxes related to his cross-border art dealings.
[29] Rybolovlev's art collection includes paintings by Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Gustav Klimt.
[32] The charges followed a criminal complaint made by Rybolovlev's family trust alleging that Bouvier had systematically overcharged it over a period of 10 years to acquire paintings.
[36][37] Bouvier has denied the claims stating that he presented himself as the seller of the artwork, rather than an adviser, and that Rybolovlev was aware of the extra markup he earned on top of the fees.
Dubbed "Monacogate" by the press,[45] the scandal unfolded with the disclosure of text messages from Rybolovlev's lawyer Tania Bersheda, which showed efforts to sway the legal proceedings and orchestrate the arrest of Bouvier in 2015.
[46] The text messages revealed that days before the arrest of Bouvier, Rybolovlev had hosted Narmino and his family and HSBC Monaco managing director Gérard Cohen at his residence in Gstaad, Switzerland.
On that basis, Bouvier and Rappo attempted to have the charges against them thrown out in November 2015, arguing that there were a number of irregularities in the legal procedure against them and that Rybolovlev may have exercised undue influence.
Dreno gained judicial responsibilities in Aix-en-Provence and had been implicated in a suspicious purchase, through the intermediary Erminio Giraudi, of an apartment at Ospedaletti on the Italian Riviera from Silvio Berlusconi's 85-year-old brother.
[64] In March 2016, the High Court of Singapore dismissed Bouvier's attempt to suspend the civil suit filed in the territory against him by two companies linked to the Rybolovlev family trust.
[70] Email exchanges unearthed by Rybolovlev’s lawyers indicate that the practice of over-invoicing was systematic, with the intermediary regularly pushing his client to buy paintings without giving them the necessary reflection time for such investments.
[71] In November that year, Sotheby's issued a pre-emptive suit in relation to Salvator Mundi, denying that it had ever been part of a scheme allegedly perpetrated by Bouvier to defraud both the sellers of the painting, and Rybolovlev.
