Reports say that 19 of the paintings in deceased Russian Oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s collection are fakes. The discovery was made by Berezovsky’s daughter as she seeks to unravel the tangled business affairs that seem to have led to his death.
The fakes are said to be part of a collection that was once valued around £50m (though these valuations in the press are notorious for their slim basis in fact):
Administrators of the billionaire’s estate are considering calling in police after 19 paintings were revealed to be forgeries. They are believed to include all the works that once hung in Wentworth Park, his former £25m Surrey mansion.
The fakes include copies of two works by the Russian landscape painters Alexei Savrasov and Alexandre Altmann which were previously valued at £550,000 and £75,000.
Dead oligarch’s art collection full of fakes (The Sunday Times)
