Federal prosecutor’s office drops proceedings against billionaire Rybolovlev
Published: Tuesday, Oct 22nd 2024, 13:10
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The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland has discontinued proceedings in the judicial affair between Geneva art dealer Yves Bouvier and Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. Bouvier had accused Rybolovlev of luring him to Monaco on a pretext in order to have him arrested there.
The verdict of the Office of the Attorney General, which was submitted by Rybolovlev's defense lawyers on Tuesday and is available to the Keystone-SDA news agency, exonerates the Russian businessman of suspicion of "prohibited acts for a foreign state".
After a careful analysis of the case files, it came to the conclusion that the defense had presented a plausible version that called into question the commission of the crime, according to the judgment of the Office of the Attorney General. It had opened the proceedings against Rybolovlev in 2017.
Years of dispute
In another case, Rybolovlev and Bouvier reached an agreement at the end of 2023 after years of dispute. The Geneva public prosecutor's office discontinued the proceedings initiated by Rybolovlev.
The Russian had accused the man from Geneva of selling him 38 works of art at an inflated price between 2003 and 2014. He lost around one billion francs as a result. The objects included paintings by well-known artists such as Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Gustav Klimt.
Bouvier rejected the accusation. He said that Rybolovlev's attacks on him had nothing to do with the sale of art objects. The billionaire's divorce in 2015 was the real reason for attacking him. In what Bouvier called the "most expensive divorce in history", Rybolovlev had wanted to reduce the value of his art collection.
©Keystone/SDA
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