A legal battle is brewing with Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun suing billionaire media mogul David Geffen over the ownership of Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture Le Nez. Sun alleges that an art adviser he once trusted sold the piece to Geffen without his approval, using forged signatures and fictitious lawyers to push the sale through.
Sun, who bought Le Nez at a Sotheby’s auction for $78.4 million in 2021, claims that his former adviser, Xiong Zihan Sydney, orchestrated the deal behind his back, even going as far as impersonating a lawyer over email. Now, he wants the artwork returned—”or substantial damages.”
Geffen’s attorney, Tibor L. Nagy, dismissed the lawsuit as “bizarre and baseless,” suggesting Sun regrets the deal. He emphasised that there’s no evidence Geffen had any direct involvement with Xiong. “Deals get done through intermediaries,” Nagy said. “If Mr. Sun is now, a year later, unhappy with the deal his intermediary got him, that’s no basis for a claim against Mr. Geffen.”
According to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, Sun had considered selling Le Nez for a profit but never permitted Xiong to finalise a deal. Yet between January and March 2024, she allegedly brokered a transaction with Geffen’s representatives, working through art dealers David and Cole Tunkl.
Under the terms of the deal, the Giacometti sculpture was exchanged for two paintings valued at $55 million, plus $10.5 million in cryptocurrency—a price Sun argues was well below his target and executed without his consent.
To make matters murkier, Sun claims that Xiong manipulated the cash portion of the deal, presenting it as a “deposit” from a nonexistent buyer. The lawsuit also alleges that she skimmed $500,000 for herself, transferring the funds from her crypto wallet to Sun’s while keeping him in the dark. Sun says he only discovered the deception in December after pressing Xiong for updates.
The case echoes the high-profile legal dispute between Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev and Sotheby’s last year. Rybolovlev accused the auction house of facilitating inflated art sales through his adviser, Yves Bouvier, who allegedly acted in his own interest as an undisclosed dealer. Sotheby’s was ultimately cleared, but the case shed light on the sometimes opaque nature of art transactions at the top end of the market.
In Sun’s case, Geffen’s legal team maintains no basis for unwinding the deal. “This is exactly how deals get done,” Nagy said.
Sun’s lawyers argue otherwise, saying that Geffen’s team should have spotted “obvious red flags” in the transaction. They claim that one glaring issue is the involvement of a so-called lawyer, Laura Chang, who Xiong allegedly used to oversee the sale—communicating solely via a personal Gmail account. The lawsuit questions whether Chang even exists.
William L. Charron, Sun’s attorney, was blunt: “Sydney Xiong confessed to the theft. She repeatedly forged Mr. Sun’s signature and fabricated a lawyer’s existence. Legitimate art transactions—alone those worth tens of millions of dollars—don’t occur that way.”
Sun is no stranger to high-profile—and sometimes bizarre—art dealings. He made headlines for purchasing Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, a banana duct-taped to a wall, only to eat it as a stunt.
Whether he’ll be forced to swallow this latest art-world entanglement remains to be seen.
Top Photo Alberto Giacommetti, Le Nez, 1947. Courtesy Sotheby’s