Dead oligarch’s art collection full of fakes

Many of the paintings in the £50m art collection of the late Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky are fakes, investigators have discovered, the Sunday Times reports.

Administrators of the billionaire’s estate are considering calling in police after 19 paintings were revealed to be forgeries. They are believed to include all the works that once hung in Wentworth Park, his former £25m Surrey mansion.

The fakes include copies of two works by the Russian landscape painters Alexei Savrasov and Alexandre Altmann which were previously valued at £550,000 and £75,000. Seventeen other paintings, originally valued at up to £500,000, were also found to be forgeries after being examined by art experts in April.