Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier and his former Russian client, oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev have settled their acrimonious business dispute

Image Credit: Anne-Gaëlle Amiot

Back in May 2013, Swiss businessman and freeport mogul, Yves Bouvier drew international interest when he negotiated a lower purchase price for the painting  “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World), attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, from the artwork's consortium's sellers.  After a short period of discussion, the businessman's offer of $83 million, via a privately brokered sale proposal, was accepted by the sellers.

This transaction was closed by Sotheby's rainmaker, Sam Valette, a senior director and vice-chairman of private sales for the auction house. Known for his ability to generate large sums of money closing deals with high profile clients who seek total discretion outside the auction hall, Valette also, on occasion, wrote assessments on artworks for Bouvier. 

As the Swiss art dealer was known to buy works of art from Sotheby’s in his own name in furtherance of his art sales business. Valette purportedly was not aware of who Bouvier intended to sell the painting to.  This suggested that as far as the auction house was concerned, Bouvier was not, in this instance, to their specific knowledge, acting as an agent for any buyer in particular when the Da Vinci transaction was finalised.

Immediately after purchasing “Salvator Mundi”, Bouvier flipped the oil painting to his then long-standing client, Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch whose fortune was built from his interests in Uralkali, one of the world's leading producers of potash fertiliser and one of Russia's largest chemical companies.  Bouvier sold the Christ painting to the Russian for $127.5 million, $44 million more than he had purchased it for.

But by March 2015 Rybolovlev had filed a series of lawsuits against Bouvier in two countries: Hong Kong and Singapore, where he had begin accusing his former business associate of swindling him out of nearly $1 billion via the sale of some 38 works of art for 2.2 billion Swiss francs ($2.5 billion) in total.  During that period, Rybolovlev's legal team succeeded in obtaining a “Mareva injunction”, a legal procedure authorising the near-instantaneous freezing of Yves Bouvier’s worldwide assets.  He followed those up in 2017 and 2019 by filing two complaints in Geneva, Switzerland against Bouvier and his alleged “accomplices for gang fraud and money laundering.

While the legal feud was still in full swing,  the oligarch sold “Salvator at Christie's to Saudi Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud in November 2017 for $450.3 million.  Shortly thereafter when the buyer was announced, news reports declared that the painting would be publicly displayed on September 18, 2018, at the newly opened Louvre in Abu Dhabi.  But that never happened. 

By December 2019 Dmitry Rybolovlev long-running legal battle with the art dealer had begun to seriously fizzle. First, before the Monaco appeals court, after he himself was charged in relation to a probe into influence peddling and corruption  involving Monegasque government officials, and allegedly justice minister, Laurent Anselmi who resigned during the scandal. Then things went quiet, with both sides apparently in private negotiations, working towards a settlement.  

On November 20th the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Geneva was informed that Rybolovlev and Bouvier had formally buried the hatchet and according to their respective lawyers, the pair were no longer at logger heads regarding their past business dealings.  

Having reaching an undisclosed agreement, which included the withdrawal of all complaints launched by Yves Bouvier and Dmitry Rybolovlev, as well as those concerning Tania Rappo and Tetiana Bersheda, the former lawyer of the Russian billionaire and a settlement agreeing that the civil case against Bouvier in Singapore will also be terminated "the parties requested that no further action be taken in the criminal proceedings and indicated that they would not be opposed to the case being closed.”  

In a press release published this Thursday, December 7, 2023, the Geneva justice system announced the dismissal of the lengthy proceedings, stating in part: 

"The Public Prosecutor's Office closed the procedure for the first time on September 15, 2021 on the grounds that the elements constituting the offences had not been fulfilled and that a procedure, relating to the same facts, had been carried out in Monaco. "

"In a ruling dated 26 July 2022, the Criminal Appeal Division of the Court of Justice overturned this decision and referred the case back to the Public Prosecutor's Office to resume the investigation. Following this ruling, the Public Prosecutor's Office conducted a number of hearings, which did not provide any evidence to raise sufficient suspicion against the defendants."

The prosecution does require Bouvier to pay 100,000 Swiss francs in court costs.