Yves Bouvier (photo courtesy of Hpetit21/Creative Commons)
On top of his tax troubles, Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier seems to be in even more legal trouble. This time, it concerns some missing Picassos.
On November 7th, an appeals court in Paris quashed Bouvier’s attempts to dismiss the case against him concerning about 70 works by Pablo Picasso that disappeared from a storage unit nearly a decade ago. The story began in 2008, when Bouvier’s business partner, Olivier Thomas, placed these works in the unit run by Bouvier’s company, Art Transit International, in the suburbs of Paris. He did so on behalf of Catherine Hutin, Picasso’s stepdaughter. At some point, Hutin discovered that these paintings and drawings had gone missing. Her sights were set on Bouvier no later than 2013 since she alleges that two of the items on her missing list, a pair of 1957 portraits of her mother Jacqueline Roque Picasso, were sold by Bouvier to Dmitri Rybolovlev for $28.5 million. Bouvier claims he bought those paintings from gallerist Jean-Marc Aittouares, yet he has not produced any documents relating to his purchase. He also claimed at one point that, yes, the portraits once belonged to Hutin but that she had sold them to him for €9 million in 2010. Hutin did indeed sell some paintings for €9 million that year, but it was for a different group of paintings rather than the portraits in question.
Adding further intrigue to the affair, a conservator contacted Hutin, saying that Olivier Thomas hired him to perform some light conservation on five paintings in storage. When she checked, these paintings were missing as well. This same conservator also stated he worked on three Picassos at Bouvier’s offices at the Geneva Freeport. The three paintings were also on Hutin’s list of work missing from her storage unit. Hutin first filed suit against Bouvier and Thomas in 2015.
Yves Bouvier and Olivier Thomas are charged with possessing stolen property, while Thomas is also facing an additional fraud charge. They have tried to stall the proceedings by claiming that the investigation was influenced by the legal team of his former adversary, Dmitri Rybolovlev. However, the court stated that it found “no evidence of partiality” from the investigators. With the court’s most recent ruling, these claims have been dismissed and their case will go to trial. Bouvier and his lawyer have said they intend to appeal the case to the Court of Cassation, the highest court in French civil and criminal cases. So, while Bouvier is free from Rybolovlev’s lawsuits, he’ll still be in court for the foreseeable future.