The Oligarch and the Art Dealer

From 2003 to 2014, Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier helped an elusive Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, amass one of the largest private art collections in the world, from Rothko and Chagall to Klimt — even a lost da Vinci. The pair went from making lucrative deals in places like Sotheby’s auction houses, however, to exclusively dealing in heated courtrooms. 

In a high-profile, international legal battle that came to be known as the Bouvier Affair, the oligarch alleged the middleman art dealer secretly inflated the prices of 38 artworks over a decade, pocketing a staggering $1 billion from his total purchases. 

Told through interviews with several of the investigative journalists, lawyers, art dealers, and historians close to the case, as well as the infamous art dealer Yves Bouvier himself, this documentary series from creators Christoph Jörg and Andreas Dalsgaard delves far beyond the court case of Bouvier’s alleged deceptions and art fraud. It’s a unique springboard into the deep backwaters of the art world — and global wealth. 

The series uses the public records of the globally known Rybolovlev vs. Bouvier case as an intriguing keyhole into the gray networks of offshore tax shelters and shady financial mechanisms that move billions of dollars through the world’s art market every year. And the resulting chronicle is a Russian nesting doll investigation of following the money, a rare opportunity to see the inner workings of a globalized system that supports, and hides, the wealth of the super rich. 

“Because of this story, we get that insight into something that until now is always secretive,” Dalsgaard says. “And for that, the art world will never be the same. Because we now see what goes on when the deals are made.”

What can viewers expect in future episodes? “It gets wilder,” Dalsgaard says.