{"id":360591,"date":"2025-08-20T23:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T23:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360591\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T23:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T23:15:12","slug":"sasan-ghandehari-sues-christies-over-picasso-once-owned-by-a-criminal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/360591\/","title":{"rendered":"Sasan Ghandehari Sues Christie’s Over Picasso Once Owned by a Criminal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCollector Sasan Ghandehari<\/a> recently filed a lawsuit against Christie\u2019s, alleging that the auction house did not inform him that a painting by Pablo Picasso<\/a> was owned by someone convicted of drug-related charges before he purchased the work.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the Financial Times<\/a>, which first reported news of the lawsuit, Brewer Management Corporation (BMC) guaranteed it would buy Picasso\u2019s Femme dans un rocking-chair (1956) for \u00a314.5 million if the artwork piece failed to sell during a Christie\u2019s evening sale in London in February 2023.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe authorized representative of BMC, which is based in the British Virgin Islands, is London-based Ghandehari, according to the Financial Times. Ghandehari, a venture capitalist, appears on the ARTnews Top 200 Collector<\/a> alongside his wife Yassmin.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit, filed in the High Court of England & Wales, Chancery Division on July 21, alleges that the Femme dans un rocking-chair was owned by Jos\u00e9 Mestre Sr., also known as Jos\u00e9 Mestre Fern\u00e1ndez, who was investigated by police, sentenced to nine years in prison<\/a>, and fined \u20ac14 million after police found 202 kilos of cocaine hidden on a cargo ship in 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to the lawsuit, Christie\u2019s told Ghandehari that Mestre\u2019s son, Jos\u00e9 Mestre Jr, was the owner of the painting at the time of the sale, but BMC says it would have never signed the contract for the third-party guarantee if the auction house had disclosed the drug-related conviction of Jos\u00e9 Mestre Sr. to Ghandehari.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit requests that Christie\u2019s cancel the contract for the third-party guarantee and return the partial payment of \u00a34.8 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tA third-party guarantee allows a guarantor to receive part of the upside if a work sells; that guarantor also agrees to purchase the work if there are no other buyers. These types of guarantees transfer the risk of a failed sale from a house to an outside party, something that has become increasingly common<\/a> during high-profile auctions.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Financial Times noted that Ghandehari had previously guaranteed Picassos sold by Christie\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit claims that Christie\u2019s was \u201cpositively misleading\u201d about the ownership and provenance of Femme dans un rocking-chair and did not disclose \u201cthe potential that it could represent the proceeds of crime\u201d. The lawsuit also claims that a senior executive at the auction house told Ghandehari that Mestre Sr. had passed away and that \u201ceverything was above board\u201d relating to the ownership history of the painting.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Christie\u2019s spokesperson told ARTnews, \u201cThis is a straight-forward debt claim and Christie\u2019s will robustly defend this claim and continue to pursue the sums rightfully owed to it. Christie\u2019s owes duties of confidentiality to its clients, bidders and buyers but is confident that it has complied with all legal and regulatory obligations in relation to due diligence of the work and our consignor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tARTnews has reached out to the legal team representing BMC and Ghandehari.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collector Sasan Ghandehari recently filed a lawsuit against Christie\u2019s, alleging that the auction house did not inform him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[52324,4021,4020,18846,4022,77,38325,126718,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-360591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artnews-top-200-collectors","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-christies","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-pablo-picasso","15":"tag-sasan-ghandehari","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115063640913718394","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}