Before everything turned sour, Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and Swiss art world figure Yves Bouvier had a flourishing partnership.
Bouvier, a self-proclaimed “fearless” wheeler-dealer, was pioneering the freeport model — a kind of free-trade zone for art, where the ultra wealthy could stash and trade expensive pieces without the art ever leaving the building.
Rybolovlev, a reclusive potash mogul and art collector, was looking to expand his portfolio — and Bouvier was happy to help. For more than a decade, Bouvier worked to help Rybolovlev amass one of the world’s great art collections. Then, their relationship fell apart.
Their globe-spanning, multi-billion-dollar feud is at the heart of “The Oligarch and the Art Dealer,” a new documentary from Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard, which dives deep into the shadowy trade in priceless masterpieces.
The film explores the series of lawsuits, criminal cases (that were eventually dropped), dirty tricks-style surveillance operations, and dramatic press coverage that played out after Rybolovlev accused Bouvier of swindling at least $1 billion by lying about the purchase prices of major works and pocketing the difference. (After a drawn-out battle, Rybolovlev and Bouvier eventually settled their dispute, with the terms undisclosed.) It also draws on ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation, which helped expose how Bouvier used a vast network of offshore companies to move billions of dollars worth of art for his many clients, including Rybolovlev. The film is showing as part of the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Forum in Washington, D.C. this week.
ICIJ spoke with Dalsgaard about how art has become one of the most efficient vehicles for hiding huge amounts of wealth, the challenges of documenting a billionaire oligarch, and how certain U.S. states have become magnets for dark money.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with the oligarch of the title of the film. You interviewed people who worked with Dmitry Rybolovlev. He’s a major part of the film, but ultimately, he’s not really there to speak for himself. What kind of character is he to you, beyond just a Russian oligarch?
What was unique in this story is that he never talks – literally never. He’s made one very short interview about the AES Monaco Football Club that he owns. That’s pretty much it. The story is about the dispute between the oligarch Rybolovlev and the Swiss art dealer and freeport magnate Bouvier. And they’ve been fighting it out in courts in eight countries. They’ve had PR teams. They’ve had spies.
So much has been made available to the public and to us through these court cases, everything from years of emails, years of text messages, invoices, whatnot. And to be allowed to look into a world they occupy — which is both the world of the ultra rich and the top echelon of the art market — and see how those deals were made, see how those negotiations take place, see how they communicate with each other, it’s just unique. I don’t know of any other case where that’s been so accessible.
It’s very interesting to me about how art stops being art. You use the phrase “wealth laundering,” and I’m wondering what it was like visiting the Swiss freeport, where thousands of pieces of priceless art are stored but almost never seen.
On one level, it’s just a warehouse. It’s a very, very dull warehouse sitting in this suburban area of Geneva, right next to the highway, close to the airport. It’s just a building. It’s got high security, sure. But it’s really just a building, and from the outside, it looks like any other building, more or less, with the fence.
When you go inside, and you walk around there, then it’s still very dull. It’s just storage. The security there is pretty much on par with Fort Knox. So, on that level, it’s an extremely secure place.
It’s basically still in the opaque international territory we can call offshore, which is the same thing you’re in when you leave the passport check-in in the airport, and then you’re in international waters, so to speak. That’s what the freeport is.
Then, someone came up with the brilliant idea. What if it doesn’t move? It just sits there.
At the same time, if it just sits there, it can be almost like a bank vault, and we can exchange that value amongst each other so I can move $100 million to you through the exchange of an ownership paper on a painting. The painting doesn’t move. It just sits in the freeport, and no one needs to see that exchange of ownership. Contrary to moving money in a bank, because all financial transactions are tracked and are actually available to authorities, this kind of transaction would be completely opaque. And that attracts a lot of people who have an interest in keeping their money hidden.
IMPACT Judge orders Nazi-looted Modigliani linked to Panama Papers be returned to heirs Apr 06, 2026
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/20160407-art-secrecy-offshore/
Art The Art of Secrecy Apr 07, 2016
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/20160403-divorce-offshore-intrigue/
Recommended reading IMPACT Judge orders Nazi-looted Modigliani linked to Panama Papers be returned to heirs Apr 06, 2026 Art The Art of Secrecy Apr 07, 2016 Offshore secrecy How the One Percenters Divorce: Offshore Intrigue Plays Hide and Seek with Millions Apr 03, 2016
that ownership of things cannot be secret – then, nothing’s going to change, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s a huge challenge to democracy. It’s the thing that’s going to undermine liberal democracy more than anything, and is doing it right now.
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Tickets are on sale now for the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Forum in Washington, D.C., Nov. 5 to 8, 2026. The Oligarch and the Art Dealer will screen on the opening night of the festival, and will be followed by a Q&A with director Andreas Dalsgaard, producer and co-creator Christoph Jörg, and art dealer and film participant Ezra Chowaiki. Use promo code ICIJ-DX26 to get a 10% discount on tickets.
Source: ICIJ · 2026-11-04