The wheels of justice have been slowly grinding away in the Salander bankruptcy case. Last week, Josh Baer reported that art world figures were appearing before a grand jury. Today, Bloomberg follows up with essentially the same story but some details on the bankruptcy:
Creditors say they’re owed about $500 million, although some are duplicate claims. Last month, hundreds of artworks for which ownership isn’t in dispute were ordered released by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris. [ . . . ] Salander rented a 45-foot-wide Italianate mansion off Madison Avenue for his gallery, at $154,000 a month. A state judge ordered it padlocked in October 2007 and the owner, Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding, put it on the market early last year for $75 million.
Salander, his wife and seven children lived a few blocks north in a six-story, 9,000-square-foot townhouse. It’s for sale with an asking price of $25 million. He traveled in the U.S. and Europe via private plane, in search of unfashionable Renaissance art he believed he could sell at a profit, according to friends, family and court records.
The bet failed. [ . . . ]In April, after a Justice Department lawyer monitoring the Salanders’ personal bankruptcy case complained that they were accumulating new debt and slow to sell assets, the court ordered them to cede control of their finances to an independent trustee. In October, in the gallery bankruptcy, art adviser Gurr Johns was hired to arrange the sale of much of its 4,000 artworks.
