Paintings by Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky and the Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico were allegedly used by a New York art dealer to lure investors and collectors into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for works he never owned or didn’t have a right to sell, Bloomberg News reported. At least three lawsuits filed this week against the dealer, Ezra Chowaiki, accuse him and the Park Avenue gallery in which he’s the president and a minority shareholder, of carrying out a variety of frauds. The gallery, Chowaiki & Co. Fine Art Ltd., filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 13. David Dangoor, the gallery’s Swedish director and majority owner, was also sued with buyers accusing him of knowing about Chowaiki’s frauds and failing to warn them.
