This full article was published by The Art Newspaper on Thursday, February 27, 2020 and features Withers' Georges Lederman.
Incarcerated dealer, Mary Boone is being sued by James Oliver, a former director of her gallery which closed last year after she was sentenced to 30 months in prison for tax fraud. Oliver alleges that he is owed at least $44,325 USD in unpaid compensation in addition to his 10% equity interest, which he was issued in 2015 and which was deeply impacted when Boone 'misappropriated ownership of valuable artworks and assets', according to the court documents.
The former director also claims more than $40,000 USD in unpaid wages. With an annual salary of $300,000, or $25,000 per month, Oliver only received $9,000 for work from January 1 to March 5, 2019, just before the gallery shuttered in May. Incidentally, these two months overlap with time that Boone spent in court for the tax fraud charges that eventually landed her in prison.
Withers' Special Counsel, Georges Lederman commented on the new lawsuit, saying it 'will probably not impact how much of her sentence she actually serves. Whether she is released early will be based primarily on her behaviour in federal prison, although the amount of the alleged fraud in this case—$44,325—is relatively small, the underlying allegation that she transferred millions of dollars in gallery funds to her personal bank account implies a fraud on a much larger scale.'
Read the full article here.
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