Libbie Mugrabi, the New York–based socialite, art collector, and ex-wife of top art collector David Mugrabi, is embroiled in an ongoing legal battle with the art-backed lending company Art Capital Group (ACG) and its executives, Ian Peck and Terence Doran, over a $3 million loan that never materialized.
In court documents, ACG claimed that Mugrabi failed to pay fees associated with a loan application. As collateral, Mugrabi allegedly put up a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting stained with the artist’s blood worth at least $30 million. When Mugrabi couldn’t come up with the $12,500 due diligence fee, the suit claims, she offered another picture, a $1.5 million Andy Warhol portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, as security.
When the loan was denied “due to her checkered credit history and one or more substantial judgments against her,” the lawsuit said, ACG claimed that Mugrabi reported the Warhol as stolen to the police in Southampton. The suit also alleges that she posted “Wanted” posters with the faces of both Peck and Doran, along with their names, ages, race and addresses. Those posters, which were posted around Manhattan and the Hamptons, allegedly read “$10,000 reward given for returned painting. Last seen taken from Sag Harbor by art lender, ‘Art Capital.’”
ACG claims that between November 2023, when Mugrabi handed ACG agents the bubble-wrapped Warhol painting, and February 2024, the company asked Mugrabi four times to settle her overdue fees, which by that point had ballooned to $97,000. The matter was nearly resolved, with ACG offering to buy the Warhol to offset the fees and expenses Mugrabi owed. Then, according to the suit, a lunch at Amaranth, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, went sideways.
ACG’s lawyers say that after an hour of amicable business lunch, “Mugrabi staged an unexpected, dramatic scene,” during which she “abruptly stood up at the table and publicly accused Plaintiffs of being thieves, screaming to all patrons in the restaurant that Plaintiffs stole the Warhol.” Before it was over, Mugrabi’s boyfriend, who went unidentified in court papers, threatened Doran and bragged about having done time at Rikers Island.
The company, which is seeking up to $30 million in damages for “financial loss, professional stain, and emotional distress,” appears to have already sold the Warhol to an undisclosed buyer, according to an email submitted to the court by ACG attorney Joe Sidley.
Last week, Claude Castro, a lawyer for Mugrabi, filed a motion to dismiss ACG’s claims, arguing that ACG not only improperly filed paperwork claiming that it had a stake in the Basquiat, but also never produced documentation related to the fees and expenses Mugrabi allegedly owes.
According to Artnet News, ACG blocked Mugrabi from selling the Basquiat at an unidentified auction house by threatening that house with a lawsuit. The Independent earlier this week reported that ACG blocked the painting’s sale twice, once just before a sale in London earlier this month and again when they prevented it from being included in a sale in New York at this coming November.
To make matters only slightly more convoluted, Sibley wrote in an email to Castro that the $1.5 million “Warhol was sold pursuant to the UCC lien/contractual agreements after your client defaulted and repeatedly refused to cure the default,” despite Mugrabi’s counsel offering a $360,000 settlement.
Mugrabi has been the subject of various media reports previously. She was arrested at her Sag Harbor property in 2022 for allegedly threatening her housekeeper with a knife; the case was ultimately dismissed. During her divorce from David Mugrabi, she accused him of assault amid a dispute over a Keith Haring sculpture. Additionally, her ex-boyfriend, Bobby Vaughn, was involved in a standoff with police at her Upper East Side townhouse in 2023.
ACG is no stranger to the press either. In 2009 the firm sued photographer Annie Leibovitz, claiming that she “failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars due under her agreements with Art Capital and a subsidiary, American Photo,” related to a $24 million loan against the rights to her every picture she’d ever taken and all her real estate holdings. That suit was settled in 2009, with Leibovitz ultimately buying back the rights to her real estate and work.
Mugrabi’s counsel declined to comment. ACG’s legal representative did not respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.
The post “Collector Libbie Mugrabi Embroiled in Legal Battle with Art-Backed Lending Company” by Daniel Cassady was published on 10/23/2024 by www.artnews.com