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Hunter Biden‘s shady art deal has gotten worse, as new details emerged showing the exhibition organizer — who the White House tapped to vet purchasers for conflicts of interests or ethical problems — was accused of fraud related to a previous art gallery exhibition.
Details were also disclosed related to Georges Berges’s previous arrest and conviction in Alana Goodman’s latest piece from the Washington Free Beacon:
Court records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shed additional light on Bergès’s legal history, which was first reported by the New York Post in January. Bergès was accused in May 1998 of assaulting a man with a knife and making death threats, according to charging documents filed in Santa Cruz County. According to prosecutors, Bergès threatened the victim “with the specific intent that the statement be taken as a threat” and “was so unequivocal, unconditional, immediate and specific as to convey to the victim a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution.”
Bergès pleaded no contest to making terrorist threats, a misdemeanor charge. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, required to submit to warrantless police searches, and barred from contacting the victim or possessing deadly weapons for 36 months, according to court records.
Goodman and the Free Beacon also obtained court records related to a 2016 case of fraud where Berges was accused of defrauding shipping heiress Ingrid Arneberg of a $500,000 investment in his art gallery:
Arneberg claimed that Bergès made numerous financial misrepresentations in the investment proposal and that his gallery was in dire economic straits at the time, according to federal court filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She said the art dealer misled her about how much additional funding he raised and falsely claimed that he sold two dozen paintings by a well-known contemporary artist for $50,000 each, when the actual numbers were significantly lower.
In court records, Arneberg also cited alleged text messages between Bergès and a friend in which the gallery owner supposedly mused that he might have to have sex with Arneberg to convince her to invest.
“Malcolm [Bricklin] thinks I may have to sleep with her [Arneberg] because she is just divorced,” Bergès allegedly said in one text message. In other texts, he reportedly described Bricklin, one of his business associates, as “the Godfather shark” who “smells money” and “is about a quick buck and I have to reign him in all the time.”
Bergès countersued Arneberg for defamation and breach of fiduciary duty. Both cases were dismissed after an undisclosed settlement in 2018, according to records.
Everything about this art deal screams “shady.”
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