A courtroom in downtown Manhattan is the last place you’d expect to find Dmitry Rybolovlev, the billionaire Russian fertilizer mogul who, like any oligarch who hasn’t yet fallen off his balcony, is considered an ally of Vladimir Putin. But he might soon appear in New York to persuade a jury that Sotheby’s colluded with a Swiss art dealer, Yves Bouvier, to trick him into overpaying by hundreds of millions for artworks including Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi.
Rybolovlev made headlines back in 2013 when he acquired the “lost” masterpiece for $127.5 million, only to flip it four years later to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for a staggering $450 million. Quite a profit, but Rybolovlev still contends that he was snookered in the initial acquisition by those who were supposed to be assisting him in building one of the world’s most enviable private collections.
