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A billion dollar Dmitry Rybolovlev has a formal suspect in a probe into corruption and influence-peddling, the principality's chief prosecutor said on Wednesday, after police questioned him for 24 hours.
The judge has been investigating for a kind of tycoon fertilizer, who owns the AS Monaco soccer club, sought to influence Monaco's law enforcement officials in a long-running dispute with Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier.
The Russian Alleges Bouvier conned him out of $ 1 billion by inflating the price of 38 pieces of art he bought over a 10-year period. Rybolovlev is suing his art adviser in Monaco, Singapore and Switzerland. Bouvier has denied wrongdoing.
"Prosecutor Sylvie Petit-Leclair told Reuters. Petit-Leclair said she would not have been informed by the judge of what charges Rybolovlev would face the case proceeded to trial.
Representatives of Rybolovlev in Russia.
Under the legal systems in France and Monaco, a suspect is placed under formal investigation. He is not formally involved in this case.
Rybolovlev spent more than $ 2 billion buying 38 masterpieces from Bouvier between 2003 and 2014.
In 2017, Rybolovlev sold one of those pieces, Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of Christ "Salvator Mundi", for $ 450 million at Christie's auction, making it the most expensive painting ever sold.
(Reporting by Matthias Galante, Writing by Richard Lough, Editing by Luke Baker)
