£6 million of paintings ‘go missing’ after Stunt evicted
CREDITORS owed millions of pounds by disgraced tycoon James Stunt are urgently hunting for a number of Old Master paintings following his dramatic eviction last week.
Stunt was understood to have several valuable works of art, worth as much as £6million, on the walls of his Belgravia house. He was thrown out of the £13million property on Thursday after failing to pay the mortgage.
However, the location and status of the pictures – which creditors hoped could be sold to raise funds to pay Stunt’s other debts – is now unclear.
‘We are investigating whether Stunt moved the art out of the house before he was evicted and where the paintings are now,’ one creditor told The Mail on Sunday.
‘The key issue is who is responsible for his art collection, and its legal status as asset. He could have dispersed the art. We are going to find out.’
Only one mystery painting emerged from the house when it was repossessed by bailiffs. Stunt, who took to social media to claim he was still a billionaire, is believed to be staying with a friend.
His art collection has been at the centre of a storm since last November when this newspaper revealed that four valuable paintings, which he had lent to Prince Charles for public display, were in fact fakes. They were part of a collection of 17 pictures that the former bullion dealer had given the Prince on loan.
They were hung in Dumfries House, the Palladian mansion in Ayrshire which Charles rescued for the nation and which now serves as the headquarters of his charitable foundation. They were passed off as a ‘Monet’, a ‘Picasso’, a ‘Dali’ and a work by ‘Chagall’. They had a supposed insurance value of £120million but were worth only £20,000 each, having been painted by US forger Tony Tetro.
All 17 of the paintings Stunt lent Charles, including some genuine artworks, were removed. The whereabouts of these pictures is unclear.
Stunt is also understood to own a £2.1 million Monet, a £1.6 million Chagall, two paintings by Pissarro worth £800,000 between them, a van Dyck and a wine collection worth £400,000. He has previously pledged to sell these to pay his creditors but when he was made bankrupt in June last year, it became clear he had not done so.
His behaviour was branded ‘appalling’ in court. His debts include a bill of £3.9million to Christie’s for a Picasso and almost a quarter of a million pounds to the law firm that handled his 2017 divorce from Petra Ecclestone, the Formula 1 heiress, with whom he has three children.
Last week’s eviction is the culmination of his spectacular fall from wealth and status. West One Loan Ltd, with whom he had a mortgage, pinned a notice of possession on the front door of his home in Belgravia. Two luxury apartments in Chelsea Harbour, worth £5 million each, have also been repossessed.
Stunt’s assets have been frozen under a Restraint Order obtained by the Crown Prosecution Service. This has left him with limited control over his art, as well as his fleet of supercars. Last year the order was varied to allow him to sell some assets.
Stunt has consistently denied commissioning, owning or attempting to sell fake art.