On February 27, the Monaco Court of Appeal formally dismissed criminal proceedings against the Russian oligarch and art collector Dmitry Rybolovlev. It also annulled its case against Tetiana Bersheda, the lawyer for Rybolovlev during his longstanding feud against his former art advisor, Yves Bouvier, which subsequently endured for over a decade.
Bersheda was responsible for filing the initial paperwork against Bouvier demonstrating a significant difference between the purchasing and sale prices of numerous works of art during his professional relationship with Rybolovlev from 2002 to 2014.
In 2017, an ethical investigation known as "Monacogate" probed Bersheda's mobile phone for her use of unauthorised recording and persuasion techniques with Monegasque authorities, including the local police force involved in Bouvier's arrest. A press release from Rybolovev's legal team says that "tens of thousands of messages" were inappropriately reviewed, including data that Bersheda had paid an IT professional to erase before turning the phone over to authorities that was recovered. Bersheda believes this "exceed[ed] the bounds of the investigation", and a formal complaint was filed in 2019.
Bouvier has since been cleared of wrongdoing across extensive legal proceedings, the last of which was concluded in December 2023 by Swiss authorities. Unsubstantiated claims of a confidentiality clause within these exchanges would suggest that neither Bouvier nor Rybolovlev is permitted to speak of the other in the media, even as they finalize the their independent legal tensions internationally.
To clear Bersheda's name, the Rybolovlev camp enlisted the lawyer Martin Reynaud to challenge Monacogate at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the highest European jurisdiction on criminal matters. Reynaud pushed back on use of personal phone records and other deep dives he argued had no place in the case by citing Article 8 of the Human Rights Act: Respect for your family and private life.
Sébastien Schapira, Bersheda's Monaco attorney, commented on the victory as it pertained to the entire conflict. "After seven years of an unrelenting legal battle, Monaco has finally recognised the illicit character of this case on the basis of the ECHR ruling, a case that never should have been opened," he said. "This definitively reestablishes Tetiana Bersheda's honour and that the actions taken were without cause."
Broadly speaking, the tactics used by both parties in what has become known as The Bouvier Affair were invasive. Swiss journalist Antoine Harari detailed the use of private detectives on each side of the conflict as well, chronicled in Heidi News as "a war of detectives." Yet with this recent ruling, it seems the slew of incendiary cases is finally and fully being put to rest.
"I am happy that this victory can finally close the long years of absurd procedures, tiresome and flawed from the first day," Bersheda told The Art Newspaper via Schapira. "Justice may be slow, but it exists."
