Ant and Dec take legal action over 'secret profits' in Banksy deals
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A court hears that an art consultant working for the TV hosts took "secret and unauthorised profits".
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Ant and Dec take legal action over 'secret profits' in Banksy deals 14 minutes ago Share Save Ian Youngs Culture reporter Share Save Ant and Dec have asked a High Court judge to help them obtain information about deals in which they bought and sold Banksy artworks, after claiming an intermediary took "secret and unauthorised profits". The TV hosts say they paid £550,000 for one set of Banksy works but the seller apparently only received £300,000, and they want to know what happened to the other £250,000. They also have "similar concerns" about being deprived of "a substantial sum" from selling 22 items, the court was told on Tuesday. The pair have asked a judge to issue a court order to force an art dealer to hand over his information about the transactions and the operations of a separate art consultant who acted on the stars' behalf. Ant and Dec enlisted the consultant, who has not been named and was referred to as X in court, to help them buy, sell and loan the artworks as they built up a contemporary art collection. They now want to "uncover what really happened in relation to these transactions" and where any missing money went, Harry Martin, for Ant and Dec, told Tuesday's hearing. He said the consultant brokered deals including the £550,000 purchase of a set of six prints in which Banksy depicted model Kate Moss as actress Marilyn Monroe in the style of Andy Warhol. Martin also gave an example of a work the pair sold - a version of Banksy's Napalm, which shows the girl - nine-year-old Kim Phuc - from a famous 1972 photo of people fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, made to look like she's holding hands with Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald. Martin said X sold it for £13,000 but told the presenters they had received £11,000, leaving "a discrepancy of £2,000". The pair are seeking the disclosure order to obtain relevant information from art dealer Andrew Lilley and his firm Lilley Fine Art Ltd, which were involved in buying works from Ant and Dec an...
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