A Paris court has secured 135 stolen paintings estimated to be worth over €200 million ($208 million) for the family of Uthman Khatib. The private collector is seeking to recover a collection of 1,800 pieces of Russian avant-garde art that were allegedly taken from a storage facility in Germany in 2019. The collection includes works attributed to Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, and Natalia Goncharova.
In 2023, hundreds more paintings from the original 1,800 were seized in Frankfurt, Germany, where the Khatibs initiated a legal battle against the alleged thief, Mozes Frisch, last March. A news announcement about the ruling described Frisch as a “convicted Russian-Israeli criminal.” In Frankfurt, Khatib is seeking the return of the allegedly stolen works or €310 million ($323 million) in compensation.
The 135 artworks were seized by French authorities from Paris-based art authentication service ArtAnalysis last spring after they had been reported stolen by the Khatibs. The company’s owner Laurette Thomas teamed up with Frisch and the art collector Olivia Amar to sue Khatib for the return of the paintings and an additional €29.3 million ($30.5 million) in damages, plus legal fees. The court sided with Khatib.
The Khatib family say that many of the 1,800 paintings are still missing, believing that some have already been sold at auction in Israel, Monaco, and France. The claim appears to be backed up by the judgement of the Paris Judicial Court, which summarized: “All in all, Mr. Uthman Khatib should be considered to have a claim arising from his ownership of works of art, which were appropriated by Mr. Mozes Frisch, who has started to sell some of them.”
At the Paris court, Thomas, Frisch, and Amar asserted that the allegedly stolen paintings belonged to Frisch and Amar. They made 15 legal claims in total but all were rejected or dismissed by the Paris court, which ordered the trio to reimburse the Khatibs for the cost of the legal proceedings. They retain the right to appeal the judgement.

Drawing attributed to Alexandra Ekster seized by French authorities in 2024. Image courtesy Khatib family.
The court noted in its judgement that Amar’s “claimed ownership is called into question by her silence when the said works were seized as part of a criminal investigation by the German police.” The German Federal Police also provided a document as evidence that states that, prior to 2013, the works were not in the possession of the Amar family. It alleged that the provenance records provided for the works had been falsified.
The collection of 1,800 works was amassed by art dealer Itzhak Zarug, who owned a gallery in Wiesbaden, Germany. Prior to the alleged theft, the works had been confiscated over suspicion that they may be fake, as part of a wider court case accusing Zarug of running a forgery ring.
In 2018, the Wiesbaden court dropped these charges against Zarug. After five years of investigating the 1,800 works in collaboration with more than 10 international experts, authorities were ultimately unable to determine the authenticity of the bulk of the collection. Only four paintings were declared to be fakes.
Zarug was convicted of lesser charges for falsifying provenance records and fraud. The 1,800 paintings were returned to Zarug and, on August 13, 2020, an agreement to divide ownership of the works was signed by Zarug, Frisch, and Khatib. This gave Khatib ownership of 871 of the works, or roughly half. He claims Frisch appropriated part of the works to which he is entitled under the agreement. This has been recognized by the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, which ordered works in Frankfurt belonging to Frisch to be seized in 2023 as a security for Khatib’s claim.
The 135 paintings seized in Paris are worth some €200 million ($208 million) according to independent firm Doerr Dallas Valuations. They will be held by the Paris court bailiff until a judgement has been made by court in Frankfurt regarding the alleged theft of these and hundreds more paintings. Some of these, the Khatibs claim, were sold via the Israeli auction house Hammersite, which they alleged was bought by associates of Frisch and Amar in March 2024.
“To steal my family’s paintings was already egregious, but then to sue my father for €30 million because he is working to return the art to its rightful owners is unconscionable,” commented Khatib’s son Castro Khatib, in the news announcement. He promised: “When we have possession of our collection once more, it will be our turn to seek compensation.”
The market for Russian avant-garde has long been blighted by forgeries. After a number of institutional shows accidentally exhibited discredited works, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne held an exhibition that interrogated the authenticity of works from its own collection in 2020.