Controversial banker’s £1.6m art up for sale
Twenty paintings that can be identified as having belonged to Arif Naqvi, the Pakistani banker currently under house arrest in London while awaiting extradition to the USA, where he faces charges relating to a $1.1 billion fraud, are to be sold by
Christie’s in London next week.
Naqvi was a serious art buyer during the Noughties art boom. His company, Abraaj Capital, was one of the biggest cultural sponsors in the Gulf. But in 2018, Abraaj went into liquidation. Naqvi was subsequently charged with fraud in the USA and convicted in absentia in Dubai. In April this year, he was arrested at Heathrow airport and, in May, he was released on a record £15 million bail pending extradition to the USA, where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an aggrieved party.
Last year, a selection of works owned by Abraaj Capital was sold
by liquidators at Bonhams for
£4.6 million; and Christie’s sold further works which Naqvi owned privately for £2 million. The latest tranche is being sold anonymously. In the current Christie’s catalogue for its Middle Eastern Modern and Contemporary art sale, the provenance reads: “Private collector”, and then “Acquired from the above by the present owner”.
However, all are documented as part of the Naqvi collection in the 2016 book, Colour and Line: the Naqvi
Collection. Valued at up to £1.6 million, the 20 works constitute 32 per cent of the value of the whole sale. Potentially
most valuable is the Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri’s large painting of a scarred vessel inscribed “Eshgh” (love) in Farsi, acquired at auction in Dubai in 2010 for $422,500. It is now estimated to make a loss at £200,000. A more historic work is L’endormie, a 1933 reclining nude by the Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said. In 2010, Naqvi paid a double-estimate £241,400 at Sotheby’s for it – a record for a nude by the artist. Christie’s estimate this time is £150,000-£250,000, but because the lower end of that estimate is less than cost, they are clearly preparing for it to make a loss, too.