Crypto magnate Justin Sun, who purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana “Comedian” (2019) in November for $6.2 million, is now suing billionaire DreamWorks co-founder and art collector David Geffen for the return of a $78.4 million sculpture that Sun says was stolen and sold without his permission.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, February 4, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Sun alleges that an Alberto Giacometti sculpture titled “Le Nez” (1947, cast 1965) was sold to Geffen in a fraudulent transaction organized by Sun’s former art advisor, Xiong Zihan Sydney, last January.
Sun’s lawyers argue that Xiong hatched an elaborate plan to steal the work and sell it after the sculpture returned from an exhibition loan in France to Sun’s storage facility in Singapore. Xiong had facilitated Sun’s original purchase of the sculpture at a 2021 Sotheby’s auction. According to the suit, Xiong agreed to sell “Le Nez” in exchange for two paintings owned by Geffen worth $55 million and an additional $10.5 million in cash.
The suit claims Xiong had no authority to close any art sales for Sun and that she conducted the transaction while posing as a representative of the APENFT Foundation, which she falsely presented to Geffen intermediaries as the owner of “Le Nez.”
Sun claims in the suit that he is the rightful owner of “Le Nez” and that Geffen is “wrongfully in possession” of the work. The suit asks for replevin, which would authorize Sun to reclaim the artwork if it were “wrongfully taken or held by the defendant.”
Geffen denied Sun’s requests to return the artwork after the allegedly fraudulent sale was revealed, the suit says.
Sun alleges that Xiong confessed last May to selling the work to Geffen without permission, forging his signature to support the sale, and pocketing $500,000 from the transaction. Sun’s lawyers are now arguing that Geffen and his trust should have been alarmed by “obvious red flags,” including the fact that the sale was being conducted from a personal Gmail account.
Xiong could not immediately be reached for comment.
Tibor Nagy, an attorney representing Geffen, told Hyperallergic that Sun’s litigation was “a desperate attempt to hide reality.” Nagy said Sun knowingly sold the work and, after failing to sell the paintings Geffen exchanged for “Le Nez,” wants the sculpture back in a case of “seller’s remorse.”
“He now wants to retrade the deal based on the implausible claim that his own art advisor and liaison to the art world duped him,” Nagy said. “Deals often get done in the art world through intermediaries. Mr. Sun knew that then, and he knows it now.”
William Charron, an attorney for Sun, told Hyperallergic that Xiong confessed to the alleged theft. “She repeatedly forged Mr. Sun’s signature and fabricated the existence of a lawyer,” Charron wrote. “Legitimate art transactions, let alone ones worth tens of millions of dollars, simply don’t occur that way.”
Independently of the dispute with Geffen, Sun is facing federal charges for allegedly violating “antifraud and market manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws” in a “scheme to artificially inflate the apparent trading volume of TRX,” his blockchain Tron’s cryptocurrency, between 2018 and 2019.
The Securities and Exchange Commission also alleges that Sun organized a promotional campaign wherein celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan, promoted the cryptocurrency without disclosing that they had been paid to do so. Sun has denied these charges.
Sun also committed to investing $30 million into Donald Trump’s DeFi platform World Liberty Financial in an X post in November.
Internationally, Sun’s Tron has also come under the microscope. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime sounded alarms over transactions occurring over Tron in an October report, writing that the blockchain was “the preferred choice for Asian crime syndicates” in the region and beyond. Tron has denied these claims.
