Bouvier Affair

The Bouvier Affair is the name that art commentators have given to a court battle that started in 2015.

Yves Bouvier

The cases centre around Yves Bouvier, a Swiss art transporter and also pioneer of the Freeport concept, bonded warehouses where high net worth individuals can store expensive fine art and other high value artifacts under special customs regime and Dmitry Rybolovlev - Russian oligarch living in Monaco, former owner of Uralkali (sold in 2010 for an estimated amount of 5.3 billion US Dollars) and President of AS Monaco football club.

Background to the Bouvier Affair

Prior to 2015, Bouvier was primarily known in the market as an art transporter and curator through his company, Natural Le Coultre; and as a major shareholder and promoter of the Freeport concept.

After having first developed Natural Le Coultre and its links to the Geneva Freeport, Bouvier in 2010 inaugurated the first Singapore Freeport, a 30 000 m2 facility near the airport.

However, in 2012 he became embroiled in a legal case involving a Canadian collector called Lorette Shefner. Shefner’s family claim that she was the victim of a complex fraud, whereby she was persuaded to sell a Soutine painting at a price far below market value, only to see the work later sold to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC for a much higher price.

Separately, de la Béraudière was implicated in the notorious case of Wolfgang Beltracchi, a German forger who was convicted in 2011 of having defrauded a number of collectors, including Daniel Filipacchi, of millions of dollars.

Bouvier’s purported connections to Galerie Jacques de la Béraudière and his ownership of an off-shore entity called Diva Fine Arts led to Bouvier also being connected to the Beltracchi case. He has, however, always denied any connection to Beltracchi and dismissed media coverage as uninformed speculation.

Case

Despite the ongoing Shefner case, and the links made by the media between Bouvier and the Beltracchi case, Bouvier remained relatively low profile outside of the specialised art world until 2015. In that year, however, two major cases thrust the Bouvier Affair firmly into the spotlight.

The best known of these involves Catherine Hutin-Blay, the step-daughter of Pablo Picasso. In March 2015, Hutin-Blay, the only daughter of Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline, filed a complaint alleging that 58 separate works had been stolen from her. Hutin-Blay alleged that the works were stolen from a store in a suburb of Paris that is run by Art Transit, a Bouvier family company.

However, another collector, Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev later announced that Bouvier had sold him the two Picasso paintings in 2013.

Bouvier denied any involvement in the thefts. In September 2015, Bouvier was formally indicted by the French authorities on charges of theft in relation to the discovery of two of the works by Picasso that Hutin-Blay alleged were stolen from her.

Rybolovlev handed over the paintings to French authorities in 2015.

The Hutin Blay case coincided with a separate case involving allegations made by Rybolovlev. In February 2015, Bouvier was indicted in Monaco on charges of fraud and complicity in money laundering. 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.

Bouvier and co-defendant Tania Rappo, who is accused of money laundering in the fraud, attempted to have charges against them thrown out in November 2015. They argued that there were a number of irregularities in the legal procedure against them and that Rybolovlev, as a prominent citizen in Monaco, may have exercised undue influence.

However, the judge rejected their argument and both are due to face trial in Monaco in 2016. Bouvier also faces a trial in the Hutin-Blay case in France later in 2016.

In late 2015, it also 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. However, Liechtenstein suspended its investigation in December 2015.

Impact of the Bouvier Affair

The Bouvier Affair has been widely reported and followed across the art world and beyond as one of the biggest art stories of 2015. Many art commentators believe that the Affair could be the catalyst for a renewed push to reform the art market.

Singapore Case

On 13 March 2015, Singapore's High Court ordered the global freezing of Yves Bouvier’s assets, and then lifted this decision 12 days later, ordering Dmitry Rybolovlev to give a total of $100m guarantee of damages from his action against Bouvier, $20m in cash and an $80m guarantee on the Rothko No. 6 painting. On 21 August 2015, Singapore's High Court completely removed the freezing injunction, on the ground that the procedure launched by Dmitry Rybolovlev amounted to an abuse of procedure. In March 2016 there was a major development in the global legal action against Bouvier when the High Court of Singapore dismissed his attempt to suspend the civil suit filed in the territory against him by two companies linked to the Rybolovlev family trust. Bouvier had argued the dispute should be fought in the Swiss courts.

In a judgment published on March 22, 2016, Senior Judge Lai Siu Chiu ruled that the Singapore suit, which was filed in the High Court in 2015, should proceed. She said the case should be transferred to the Singapore International Commercial Court, which deals specifically with cross-border commercial disputes.