picasso panama papers ganz collection 469646
The Panama Papers leak has revealed that the 1997 sale of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection at Christie's New York, which set a private collection auction record at $206 million, was secretly orchestrated by billionaire currency trader Joseph Lewis. Lewis had already purchased the top works from the collection through a Christie's subsidiary, Spink & Son, months before the auction, and structured a guarantee that shared profits above $168 million. The transaction was routed through Simsbury International Corp., a shell company registered in Niue by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, with Lewis serving as the primary risk-taker and beneficiary.