Yves Bouvier accuses dealer Antoine Peretti of withholding Picasso resale proceeds
The new application, before a different judge than his first, seeks Sotheby's records of 2024 art sales.
Law and Crime
Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier filed a criminal complaint in Paris accusing a French dealer of failing to remit millions from the quick resale of a Picasso to Sotheby's, court documents show.
The complaint, filed with the Paris public prosecutor's office on July 8 and made public as an exhibit in a New York court case, accuses Antoine Peretti of breach of trust over the sale of Picasso's Intimité (Femmes et Enfants), a 1903 pastel and graphite work on paper.
The prosecutor's office registered the complaint, which is the first step in the process and does not mean charges have been brought.
Bouvier bought the painting from Peretti on April 25, 2024, for $7.25 million intending to resell it, the complaint says. Their contract stated any profit above $7.25 million would be split evenly between them.
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Court Documents: Yves Bouvier’s second Sotheby’s records bid
Records from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Adam Schrader
Bouvier wired $7.25 million to Peretti's account at CBH Hong Kong on May 10, 2024, a payment Peretti confirmed by WhatsApp, the complaint says.
That same day, Peretti paid $6.6 million from the account to Milocci Limited, trading as de Sarthe Gallery Hong Kong — a company Bouvier is separately fighting over a larger group of works.
The painting was resold to Sotheby's in a private sale on June 14, 2024, for a net seller price of $9 million, the complaint says. Bouvier says Peretti never told him about the sale and never paid him what he was owed: his $7.25 million back plus half of the $1.75 million profit — $875,000 — totaling $8.125 million.
Bouvier allegedly pursued Peretti for an accounting and the money for months. The French complaint includes a series of WhatsApp messages between them from late 2024.
In an October message, Bouvier asked Peretti to "communicate the profit" from the resale. Peretti replied that he was "sorry for the late return" and would get back to him "hopefully in the afternoon with news," according to the messages.
When Bouvier pressed again, Peretti pointed him to his own father — Jean-Marc Peretti — writing that his father had said Bouvier "have to check with him," the complaint says.
In a later message, Antoine Peretti wrote that he did not want to "interfere in your relationship" with his father and would "keep you informed when I have news."
By December 2024, Bouvier was asserting that the resale itself was improper. Because Sotheby's had resold the painting without his involvement, he wrote, "the painting is technically still my property and the initial sale is invalid," according to a message quoted in the complaint.
Antoine Peretti is the son of Jean-Marc Peretti, the art-world intermediary who is central to a separate dispute Bouvier is pursuing over a larger group of works, and whom Urgent Matter previously reported was convicted in France last year.
The complaint in the latest French case says Bouvier and the elder Peretti were once friends. It argues that Antoine Peretti's deflections to his father were made in bad faith because the father was not a party to the 2024 contract.
Bouvier's Dubai lawyers sent Peretti a formal demand in November 2025, and his French firm followed with another in 2026, the complaint says. The registered letter was returned unclaimed. Peretti has not responded publicly to the accusations.
The French complaint accuses Peretti of breach of trust under French law and asserts that French courts have jurisdiction because he is a French national, for conduct it places in Dubai and Hong Kong.
The complaint surfaced because Bouvier is trying to obtain records from Sotheby's to support the French case. On July 22, he filed an ex parte application in the Southern District of New York under a federal statute allowing participants in foreign cases to gather evidence in the United States. He seeks Sotheby's records of art sales and proceeds from January 1 to December 31, 2024.
The application was assigned to U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil. It asks the court to authorize a subpoena to Sotheby's while waiving notice to Peretti, Sotheby's and de Sarthe Gallery.
Bouvier became one of the art market's most closely watched figures through his long feud with Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who accused him of secretly overcharging by enormous margins on the masterpieces Bouvier sold him.
He denied wrongdoing, and the two men settled in 2023. Bouvier was arrested in Monaco in 2015 on a complaint from Rybolovlev, and told the New York court in his earlier case that the affair left him blacklisted by auction houses.
Milocci Limited — the entity that received Bouvier's $6.6 million and then resold the Picasso to Sotheby's — is one of several de Sarthe companies at the center of that other case.
Bouvier has accused them, in a Hong Kong lawsuit and an earlier New York discovery bid, of failing to account for 91 artworks he says vanished after he transferred them to Hong Kong dealer Pascal de Sarthe between 2015 and 2017, Urgent Matter first reported.
The documents do not say whether the Picasso was among those 91 works.
That earlier application remains unresolved. In May, a magistrate judge recommended letting Bouvier subpoena Sotheby's and Christie's for a narrower set of records and allowing the de Sarthe companies — and Jean-Marc Peretti — to intervene. The docket shows no ruling adopting that recommendation.
Bouvier is himself due to stand trial in Paris in a separate criminal case, over the alleged disappearance of dozens of Picasso works belonging to the artist's stepdaughter, Catherine Hutin, as Urgent Matter reported. He has denied wrongdoing in that case.
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