The Swiss businessman, art dealer and “freeport king”, Yves Bouvier, was charged with illicit possession in a Paris court on 14 September. Bouvier’s bail was set at €27m, to be paid in three instalments by June 2016. Bouvier denies any wrongdoing. The case concerns the alleged theft of 60 works by Picasso; his stepdaughter, Catherin Hutin-Blay, claims they were stolen from a storage facility in a Paris suburb run by Art Transit, a Bouvier family company. Bouvier sold the works for €36m to the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, but the Swiss dealer’s spokesman says that he “never suspected they could have been stolen” and that he had proceeded with all due diligence, including consulting the Art Loss Register, which indicated that the works were not registered as stolen. Rybolovlev’s lawyers says that he is ready to give everything back, if the works were indeed stolen.
