The Panama Papers leak has revealed that the 1997 sale of the Victor and Sally Ganz collection at Christie's New York 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 sale, which set a private collection auction record at $206 million, included Pablo Picasso's "Women of Algiers (version O)" fetching $31.9 million. The documents also confirm that a Modigliani painting involved in a Nazi restitution case belongs to the Nahmad family.
This matters because the revelations expose how the ultra-wealthy use offshore shell companies and law firms like Mossack Fonseca to manipulate the art market, obscuring ownership and financial arrangements. The Ganz sale is considered a watershed moment that transformed art into a global investment commodity, and the Panama Papers provide rare transparency into the secret dealings of major collectors and auction houses, raising questions about ethics, provenance, and market integrity.