(Bloomberg) -- Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev was cleared by Swiss investigators over his alleged role in the arrest of an art dealer Yves Bouvier in Monaco, according to his lawyers.
The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland closed the criminal proceedings against Rybolovlev initiated in 2017, when he was accused of acting illegally for a foreign state, his lawyers said in an emailed statement. Rybolovlev was investigated for alleged use of “false pretenses or threats” to take a person “abroad in order to hand him over to a foreign authority.”
“The Office of the Attorney General concludes that no suspicion justifying an indictment has been established,” Sandrine Giroud and Benoît Mauron, lawyers for Rybolovlev, said. “The Swiss judiciary has definitively closed the case and confirmed our client’s innocence.”
The Swiss attorney general’s office confirmed the case was closed. Bouvier’s lawyers didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.
The decision marks the latest twist in the long-running feud between the two men that’s spanned continents. Their dispute played out in in New York, Singapore, Geneva and Monaco since Rybolovlev accused Bouvier of overcharging him by about $1 billion for dozens of works of art by Leonardo da Vinci, Rene Magritte and others.
Bouvier, a Swiss national, was arrested in 2015 on his way to meet Rybolovlev at his Monaco penthouse to discuss the sale of more artwork. The complaint was eventually thrown out in 2019 by a Monaco judge who concluded the probe preceding Bouvier’s arrest was tainted.
Bouvier and his lawyers previously argued that he was never Rybolovlev’s broker and that the Russian was just a repeat customer willing to pay top prices.
(Updates with comment from the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland in the fourth paragraph.)
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