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The Russian billionaire owner of the Monegasque football club was in custody on Tuesday, said his lawyer, which is a last attempt in his legal battle with a Swiss art dealer who, he said, had scam of a billion dollars and auctioneers from Sotheby's & # 39; s.
Police also raided Dmitry Rybolovlev's luxury penthouse on Tuesday morning, a source close to the case said.
Rybolovlev's lawyer, Hervé Temine, confirmed the latest developments while emphasizing the principle of the presumption of innocence.
Temine's colleague, Thomas Giaccardi, said the latter decision comes after the seizure and analysis of a cell phone belonging to one of Rybolovlev's lawyers, Tetiana Bersheda.
Since 2015, Rybolovlev has been engaged in a legal battle against the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier, whom he accuses of stealing up to a billion dollars by charging exaggerated fees.
When Rybolovlev's lawyer, Bersheda, produced an audio recording of her mobile phone that she said corroborated her case, the investigating magistrate ordered the extraction of text messages from the same phone.
This led the Monaco prosecutors to open an investigation for bribery against Rybolovlev in 2017.
His legal team has repeatedly stated that this analysis of the phone constituted a breach of the solicitor-client privilege. The issue is still pending before the courts, but some of the compromising SMS have already been leaked to the French press.
On October 2 of this year, Rybolovlev opened a new front in its legal battle, commencing a $ 380 million (€ 333 million) lawsuit against the Sotheby's auction house in court from New York.
He accused the auction house of having helped Bouvier, their artistic adviser, to commit "at his own expense, the greatest artistic fraud in history".
Rybolovlev says that Bouvier tricked him into acquiring 38 works of art that he bought for more than 10 years for more than $ 2.1 billion.
"He repeatedly and flagrantly distorted the prices of paintings", pocketing the difference itself, says the lawsuit.
Sotheby's dismissed the lawsuit as "totally unfounded".
In November 2017, he himself brought a lawsuit against Rybolovlev in Switzerland and demanded the dismissal of the action in New York.
The president of the Monegasque football club, Dmitri Rybolovlev, is engaged in a legal battle against a Swiss art dealer and the Sotheby's auction house.
