Libbie Mugrabi, the New York–based mostly socialite, artwork collector, and ex-wife of high artwork collector David Mugrabi, is embroiled in an ongoing authorized battle with the art-backed lending firm Artwork Capital Group (ACG) and its executives, Ian Peck and Terence Doran, over a $3 million mortgage that by no means materialized.
In court docket paperwork, ACG claimed that Mugrabi did not pay charges related to a mortgage utility. As collateral, Mugrabi allegedly put up a Jean-Michel Basquiat portray stained with the artist’s blood value at the least $30 million. When Mugrabi couldn’t give you the $12,500 due diligence price, the go well with claims, she provided one other image, a $1.5 million Andy Warhol portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as safety.
When the mortgage was denied “resulting from her checkered credit score historical past and a number of substantial judgments towards her,” the lawsuit mentioned, ACG claimed that Mugrabi reported the Warhol as stolen to the police in Southampton. The go well with additionally alleges that she posted “Wished” posters with the faces of each Peck and Doran, together with their names, ages, race and addresses. These posters, which had been posted round Manhattan and the Hamptons, allegedly learn “$10,000 reward given for returned portray. Final seen taken from Sag Harbor by artwork lender, ‘Artwork Capital.’”
ACG claims that between November 2023, when Mugrabi handed ACG brokers the bubble-wrapped Warhol portray, and February 2024, the corporate requested Mugrabi 4 instances to settle her overdue charges, which by that time had ballooned to $97,000. The matter was almost resolved, with ACG providing to purchase the Warhol to offset the charges and bills Mugrabi owed. Then, in response to the go well with, a lunch at Amaranth, on Manhattan’s Higher East Aspect, went sideways.
ACG’s legal professionals say that after an hour of amicable enterprise lunch, “Mugrabi staged an surprising, dramatic scene,” throughout which she “abruptly stood up on the desk and publicly accused Plaintiffs of being thieves, screaming to all patrons within the restaurant that Plaintiffs stole the Warhol.” Earlier than it was over, Mugrabi’s boyfriend, who went unidentified in court docket papers, threatened Doran and bragged about having accomplished time at Rikers Island.
The corporate, which is searching for as much as $30 million in damages for “monetary loss, skilled stain, and emotional misery,” seems to have already offered the Warhol to an undisclosed purchaser, in response to an electronic mail submitted to the court docket by ACG lawyer Joe Sidley.
Final week, Claude Castro, a lawyer for Mugrabi, filed a movement to dismiss ACG’s claims, arguing that ACG not solely improperly filed paperwork claiming that it had a stake within the Basquiat, but additionally by no means produced documentation associated to the charges and bills Mugrabi allegedly owes.
In response to Artnet Information, ACG blocked Mugrabi from promoting the Basquiat at an unidentified public sale home by threatening that home with a lawsuit. The Impartial earlier this week reported that ACG blocked the portray’s sale twice, as soon as simply earlier than a sale in London earlier this month and once more once they prevented it from being included in a sale in New York at this coming November.
To make issues solely barely extra convoluted, Sibley wrote in an electronic mail to Castro that the $1.5 million “Warhol was offered pursuant to the UCC lien/contractual agreements after your shopper defaulted and repeatedly refused to remedy the default,” regardless of Mugrabi’s counsel providing a $360,000 settlement.
Mugrabi has been the topic of assorted media experiences beforehand. She was arrested at her Sag Harbor property in 2022 for allegedly threatening her housekeeper with a knife; the case was in the end dismissed. Throughout her divorce from David Mugrabi, she accused him of assault amid a dispute over a Keith Haring sculpture. Moreover, her ex-boyfriend, Bobby Vaughn, was concerned in a standoff with police at her Higher East Aspect townhouse in 2023.
ACG is not any stranger to the press both. In 2009 the agency sued photographer Annie Leibovitz, claiming that she “did not pay tons of of hundreds of {dollars} due underneath her agreements with Artwork Capital and a subsidiary, American Photograph,” associated to a $24 million mortgage towards the rights to her each image she’d ever taken and all her actual property holdings. That go well with was settled in 2009, with Leibovitz in the end shopping for again the rights to her actual property and work.
Mugrabi’s counsel declined to remark. ACG’s authorized consultant didn’t reply to ARTnews’s request for remark.