Crypto-magnate Justin Sun, who bought Maurizio Cattelan’s Channel Bananan “Comedian” (2019) In November for $ 6.2 million, now billionaire DreamWorks co-founder and art collector David Geffen to the return of a sculpture of $ 78.4 million that Sun says it has been stolen and sold without his permission.
In a lawsuit brought on Tuesday 4 February in the district court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, Sun claims that an Alberto Giacometti -Beeldhouwkunst entitled ‘Le Nez(1947, cast 1965) was sold to Geffen in a fraudulent transaction organized by Sun’s former art adviser, Xiong Zihan Sydney, last January.
Sun’s lawyers claim that Xiong has hatched an extensive plan to steal and sell the work after sculpture returned from an exhibition loan in France to the storage facility of Sun in Singapore. Xiong had facilitated Sun’s original purchase of the image on a Sotheby’s Auction from 2021. According to the suit, Xiong agreed to sell “Le Nez” in exchange for two paintings owned by Geffen worth $ 55 million and an extra $ 10.5 million in cash.
The suit claims that Xiong had no authority to close an art sale for Sun and that it carried out the transaction while she presented herself as a representative of the APENFT Foundation, which she wrongly presented to Geffen -among others as the owner of “le Nez. “
Sun claims in the suit that he is the rightful owner of “Le Nez” and that Geffen “is” wrongly owned “of the work. The suit asks for Replevin, who would authorize the sun to reclaim the artwork if it were “wrongly taken or held by the suspect. “
Geffen denied Sun’s requests to return the artwork after the alleged fraudulent sale was unveiled, says the suit.
Sun claims that Xiong announced last May to sell the work to Geffen without permission, signs his signature to support the sale and take $ 500,000 from the transaction. Sun’s lawyers now claim that Geffen and his confidence should have been alerted by ‘obvious red flags’, including the fact that the sale was carried out from a personal Gmail account.
Xiong could not be reached immediately for comment.
Tibor Nagy, a lawyer who represents Geffen, said Hyperallergic The lawsuit of that sun was ‘a desperate attempt to hide reality’. Nagy said that Sun knowingly and knowingly sold the work and, after not selling the paintings that Geffen had exchanged for “Le Nez”, wants the image back in a case of “seller remorse”.
“He now wants to withdraw the deal based on the unbelievable claim that his own art adviser and contact person to the art world has cheated him,” said Nagy. “Deals are often done in the art world via intermediaries. Mr. Sun knew that then and he knows now. ‘
William Charron, a lawyer for Sun, said Hyperallergic That Xiong confessed the alleged theft. “She repeatedly forged the signature of Mr. Sun and made up the existence of a lawyer,” wrote Charron. “Legitimate art transactions, let alone those who are worth tens of millions of dollars, just don’t happen.”
Regardless of the dispute with Geffen, Sun is confronted with federal charges for Allegedly broken “Antifraud and market manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws” in a “schedule to artificially blow up the apparent trade volume of TRX”, are Blockchain Tron’s Cryptocurrency, between 2018 and 2019.
The Securities and Exchange Commission too to claim That sun organized a promotion campaign in which celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, promoted the cryptocurrency without making known that they had been paid for that. Sun refused These costs.
Sun has also committed itself to invest $ 30 million in Donald Trump’s Defi Platform World Liberty Financial in one X Post in November.
Sun’s Tron has also come under the microscope internationally. The United Nations office on drugs and crime sounded alarms about transactions that took place via Tron in an October reportWriting that the blockchain was ‘the preference for Asian crime syndicates’ in the region and then. Tron has denied these claims.
