Sotheby's was involved in a dozen sales, but only four are the subject of the lawsuit. The auction house has said it knew nothing of any plan and, as his lawyers argued again on Friday, that Rybolovlev should have only himself to blame for failing to protect himself against price inflation.
In particular, Sotheby's lawyer Marcus Asner said, Rybolovlev's assistant had never formalized the agency agreement with Bouvier, had never asked to see the contracts with the sellers from whom Bouvier said he was buying art and had never verified where everything was. the money. Rybolovlev called.
Although Rybolovlev's assistant was the key person, Asner said, the billionaire himself also never checked these things and was ultimately responsible because he was in charge.
“Do you understand the term 'trust and verify'?” Asner said.
“I understand,” Rybolovlev replied.
“Mr. Rybolovlev, do you know the expression 'the buck stops here'?” Asner asked later. “You're the boss.”
One of the most fascinating moments of Rybolovlev's second day on the stand was his account of how he first realized that he had been overpaying for his art. Rybolovlev, speaking softly in Russian through a translator sitting next to him, described to the jury a chance meeting in St. Barths in December 2014 with a New York art advisor.
While having lunch with his girlfriend, a collector friend and her wife at a restaurant at the Eden Rock Hotel, Rybolovlev said, he struck up a conversation with art advisor Sandy Heller. The art advisor, he said, mentioned that a client, hedge fund manager and Mets owner Steven A. Cohen, had recently sold a Modigliani painting for $93.5 million.
