Femme dans un rocking-chair by Pablo Picasso
A collector is suing Christie’s for allegedly failing to disclose that a cocaine kingpin may have previously owned a Picasso painting they agreed to buy.
Sasan Ghandehari is the son of the Kazakh-born Iranian billionaire Hourieh Peramam, who made her money in real estate. Both Sasan and his wife, Yassmin, are involved in Peramam’s business and are known as prominent art collectors. Yassmin Ghandehari is a member of the Sotheby’s International Council, a co-founder of the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Trust, and a former council member for the University of the Arts London. The couple are regular donors to the Tate museums, and have amassed an impressive art collection, mainly focusing on modern and contemporary artists. They have previously been listed on the ArtNews Top 200 Collectors list. Sasan Ghandehari also occasionally serves as an intermediary to assist other collectors and large businesses in acquiring works of art for their own collections. He was working in this capacity when the Brewer Management Corporation (BMC) named him as their authorized representative in acquiring paintings from Christie’s. The company guaranteed it would purchase Pablo Picasso’s 1956 painting Femme dans un rocking-chair at a Christie’s sale in February 2023. However, Ghandehari and BMC have recently filed a lawsuit against Christie’s in the High Court of England & Wales’s Chancery Division, alleging that the auction house obfuscated the work’s provenance.
According to the painting’s webpage, the owners who consigned the work to the sale initially acquired it at Christie’s in 2007. It’s not uncommon for more recent owners to remain anonymous in the provenance sections of auction house websites. However, according to the suit, BMC would never have agreed to guarantee the Picasso if it had known the identity of the previous owner. They allege that this owner was José Mestre Fernández, one of the largest cocaine traffickers in Barcelona. Mestre operated the company TerCat, which was given the contract to oversee operations in Barcelona’s cargo port. In 2010, he was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison after police confiscated 202 kilograms of cocaine from a cargo. The suit alleges that Christie’s had disclosed the previous owner’s identity. However, BMC claims that they never would have agreed to serve as the painting’s guarantor if they knew of Mestre’s criminal activity, since there’s a possibility that Mestre purchased the work with proceeds from his cocaine trafficking. The lawsuit demands that Christie’s cancel the contract and return the £4.8 million that BMC has already paid.
A spokesperson for Christie’s described the suit as “a straight-forward debt claim” which the auction house will “robustly defend […]. Christie’s owes duties of confidentiality to its clients, bidders and buyers but is confident that it has complied with all legal and regulatory obligations in relation to due diligence of the work and our consignor.”