French police and court bailiffs this week seized more than 100 works attributed to Russian avant-garde artists at a laboratory in Paris on suspicion they were stolen from a private collector, according to his lawyer.
The lawyer at the international firm Dentons in Frankfurt who is representing the collector, a businessman and investor of Palestinian origin living in Israel named Uthman Khatib, says the value of the seized works is estimated at more than €100m. They include paintings attributed to Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich and Natalia Goncharova, says the lawyer, who asked not to be identified by name.
The paintings were stolen from a storage facility rented by Khatib in Wiesbaden, Germany, in December 2019, according to German court documents seen by The Art Newspaper. The Paris raid follows a similar operation at a Frankfurt storage facility last year, where bailiffs seized hundreds of works that Khatib says were stolen from him. The Dentons spokesman did not want to give a precise figure, but says around 400 works have been recovered in total.
The Khatib family is seeking as many as 1,800 stolen works altogether, according to Khatib’s son, Castro Ben Leon Lawrence Jayyusi, who is leading the family’s quest to trace and recover the lost art. He has secured funding from the Prague-based litigation financier LitFin to pursue the art, some of which he says has been sold at auction in Israel, France and Monaco over the past year.
“We will follow the perpetrators around the world,” Jayyusi says. “We will continue to recover our property and encourage anyone who is considering buying Russian avant-garde works to diligently check its provenance and make sure it is not a stolen piece belonging to our family.”
The alleged theft and seizures are likely to further cloud the troubled market for Russian avant-garde art, which has long been riddled with pitfalls for collectors because of the large number of fakes in circulation.
Khatib purchased the paintings in question in 2015 from Itzhak Zarug, an Israeli art dealer who owned a gallery in Wiesbaden. At the time of his purchase, the works had been confiscated by the Wiesbaden public prosecutor’s office on suspicion they were forgeries. Zarug was imprisoned on suspicion of running a forgery ring.
But a court in Wiesbaden dropped charges of forgery and criminal conspiracy against Zarug in 2018, though he and a colleague were convicted on lesser charges of falsifying the provenance of artworks and selling a work proven to be a forgery.
The authorities returned the collection—by then 49% owned by Khatib, according to the court documents—to Zarug in 2019. But shortly after its return, the art was stolen from Khatib’s storage facility in Wiesbaden, the documents state.
Under his agreement with Zarug, Khatib owns 871 of the 1,800 works. Jayyusi says he knows the identity of the thief and first attempted to recover the works by negotiation before taking legal action. But three years later, in 2022, he had still not recovered any of his family’s missing art and, Jayyusi says, some works began to resurface at auction houses in Israel and France.
Last year, the Frankfurt higher regional court issued a ruling allowing bailiffs to seize works owned by Khatib at a storage facility in the city. On Khatib’s behalf, Dentons also contacted the auction houses.
In a letter to Ruellan Auction in Vannes in France in April 2023, Dentons listed a number of works offered in prior auctions that it said were stolen. The Khatib family also filed a complaint with the prosecutor in Vannes. Copies of the letter and complaint were seen by The Art Newspaper.
The works listed in the letter included drawings and watercolours attributed to Goncharova, an oil painting attributed to Mikhail Larionov, and a painting attributed to Alexandra Exter. The provenances given in the online catalogue for these works vary, but neither Zarug’s nor Khatib’s name appears.
In response to an enquiry sent to the director of the auction house, Jack Philippe Ruellan, his lawyer, Armelle de Coulhac-Mazérieux, wrote that Ruellan Auction could not respond to the questions “as the public order regulations to which they are subject require it to maintain the strictest confidentiality.” She added that Khatib’s claim of ownership is “without the slightest foundation.”
Dentons also wrote a cease-and-desist letter to the Tel Aviv auction house Hammersite on 21 November 2023, asking it to stop the sale of 38 works attributed to artists including Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich and El Lissitzky. The works were nonetheless offered on 26 November, in an auction titled “Fine Art including Important Russian Paintings From Perl Collection.”
Approached by email for comment, Michael Benami, the chief executive of Hammersite, said “the lawyer of the legal owner of the collection should answer you.”
In its provenance descriptions for some of the works claimed by Khatib, Hammersite’s website lists the most recent owner as Olivia Amar. A person who identified himself as Amar’s grandson, but gave his name only as Bar, sent a text message to the author of this article threatening legal action against anyone publishing information about the disputed paintings in the auction.
The Paris raid that ended this week was authorised by the Juge de l’exécution du Tribunal judiciaire, an enforcement judge who can grant permissions for urgent action before court hearings have occurred.
It took place at Art Analysis, a laboratory that conducts scientific research and analysis on works of art and was founded by Laurette Thomas 25 years ago. In response to an email seeking comment, Thomas wrote, “it is not up to me to answer your questions.”