Administrators cannot locate two paintings supposedly belonging to Mayfair Fine Art Limited, whose former director Matthew Green is being charged with attempted money laundering following the scandal involving the city stockbroker Beaufort Securities earlier this year.
In a progress report, Kingston Smith & Partners, the corporate recovery and insolvency firm who have been administering Mayfair Fine Art following its bankruptcy in March, claim that the two paintings allegedly purchased from a third party cannot be found.
The contact information provided by Mayfair Fine Art, which states that the works were purchased by an “associated company” and were “apparently held in Dubai”, was found to be insufficient in ascertaining the ownership, location or existence of the artworks. A source at Kingston Smith has declined to share further details of the works in question.
The report also reveals that MBU Capital Limited, the secured creditor who called time on an overdue loan and initiated the administration of Mayfair Fine Art, is still owed an estimated £520,000 to be paid from the company’s assets. Kingston Smith & Partners are continuing to enquire into the full extent of the company’s assets and transactions, including examining the company’s historic bank transactions in order to reach a fair settlement.
In March, Green was charged with conspiring with Panayiotis “Peter” Kyriacou, an investment manager at Beaufort’s London office, and his uncle Aristos Aristodemou to "clean up" £6.7m through the attempted sale of a Picasso painting to an undercover FBI agent.
The ensuing multi-court indictment by US federal court has seen six individuals and four companies charged with an array of crimes relating to money laundering and conspiracy.
Of the six individuals charged, two defendants have since pleaded guilty. Arvinsingh Canaye, who ran the Mauritius branch of Beaufort Management, pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to launder money in August and Adrian Baron, the chief business officer of Loyal Bank pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the US in September.
Green, 51, who left his directorial roles at his family’s company Richard Green & Sons Limited in 2012, is among the four remaining defendants who have yet to plead.