Sotheby’s ‘misled’ Sultan to pay £725k for sculpture

‘Misrepresented’ statue’s selling agent is disclosed to be the mother of auction house’s sale consultant

AN EGYPTIAN sculpture being sold through the mother of a Sotheby’s consultant has become the subject of a £725,000 court case, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. The sculpture, Au Bord du Nil by Mahmoud Mokhtar, was sold in 2016 to Sultan Sooud Al-qassemi, who now claims he paid 10 times over the odds for it after the date it was made was misrepresented in the auction house catalogue. In a High Court case, it has now emerged that Nesreen Farag, the selling agent of the sculpture, is the mother of Mai Eldib, Sotheby’s consultant to the sale.

The relationship, the Sultan’s legal representatives say, appears to be contrary to Sotheby’s code of business conduct as it could involve a conflict of interest. Ms Eldib was involved in the bidding arrangements for the sculpture, though it is not yet known whether she placed a bid.

The Sultan is one of the most prominent collectors of modern Middle Eastern art, paying record prices and touring his collection at galleries around the world. He is also an important Sotheby’s client.

He bought the sculpture in 2016 for £725,000, nearly 10 times the estimate, on the understanding that Sotheby’s description of it as a lifetime cast was correct. Subsequently, he claims he found reason to believe Sotheby’s had misrepresented the sculpture, that the cast was posthumous and therefore worth less. The Sultan’s lawyers quoted a price of £70,000 as being nearer to its true value as a posthumous cast. Sotheby’s rejected the Sultan’s claim for a total refund, so he took them to court. The case hinges on the degree of Sotheby’s responsibility to correctly describe an item for sale, justifying its 20 per cent buyers’ premium charge, and whether the client should bear any responsibility in terms of conducting their own research, or caveat emptor.

Sotheby’s argued that, in correspondence with the sculpture’s foundry, there was some vagueness about the dating of the cast. “The foundry has acknowledged that, in the absence of records to the contrary, any comments regarding the markings are necessarily speculative,” the auction house said in a statement. Last week, The Daily Telegraph asked Ms Eldib to comment on the allegation that she breached her company’s code of conduct, but has received no reply.

With regards to the original charge concerning the dating and value of the sculpture, a spokesman for Sotheby’s told The Telegraph: “We will be vigorously defending our position and are confident that the court will find the claims against us entirely baseless.

“As this matter is now before the court, it would not be appropriate for us to respond to the claimant’s specific allegations in the media.”