first charged<\/a> in November 2025, alongside the shipping company Artay Rauchwerger Solomons, after selling Condo\u2019s work on paper, Escape from Humanity (2021), to a collector named Alexander Popov. The sale is reported to have happened sometime between 14 April and 31 December 2022\u2014after the UK\u2019s department for international trade imposed a ban on the export of luxury goods worth more than \u00a3250 to Russia, in response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. <\/p>\nPopov, who runs a prominent art foundation with his wife, is not under UK sanctions and was not accused of any wrongdoing. <\/p>\n
In what was believed to be the first case relating to the UK\u2019s ban on supply of luxury goods to Russia, Judge Tony Baumgardner quashed the two criminal charges yesterday, ruling that prosecutors had not produced sufficient evidence that Popov was a Russian resident at the time of the sale. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Hauser & Wirth confirmed that the court had \u201cdismissed the case against our UK gallery in its entirety\u201d. They add: \u201cFrom the outset, we strongly contested these proceedings and denied any wrongdoing. We continue to be fully committed to complying with all our legal obligations including with respect to sanctions. We are pleased that this matter is now closed.\u201d <\/p>\n
The prosecution came at the end of last year after it was announced that Condo had left Hauser & Wirth; the gallery\u2019s spokesperson told The Art Newspaper at the time that Condo\u2019s decision to leave was not connected to the case. This week, Hauser & Wirth announced it would once again represent Condo alongside his long-term gallery Spr\u00fcth Magers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Swiss mega gallery Hauser & Wirth, which has spaces in London and Somerset as well as Los…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":924984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,180007,26344,257,3657,126,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-924983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-george-condo","tag-hauser-wirth","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-sanctions","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116894438789968321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}