Oligarch sues Christie's over "fake"

Viktor Vekselberg, one of the Russian billionaires that Christie's necessarily courts, is to sue the auction house, alleging that they sold him a fake, reports the Telegraph. Vekselberg bought a work by painter Boris Kustodiev, Odalisque, for £1.69m in November 2005. The collector's investment arm, the Aurora Fund, apparently began to have its suspicions over the authenticity of the work a year later. These were further fueled when the Rosokhrankultura, a Russian government department charged with the protection of Russian culture, published a catalogue of fraudulent works in 2009, which included Odalisque. After further academic research into Kustodiev's practice, the Aurora Fund is now seeking its money back plus damages.