When the surprising verdict was made in Geneva, the Saudi ruler Muhammad Bin Salman was visiting Emmanuel Macron in the Elysée.
Together they searched for ways out of the crises of the world.
Saudi Arabia has gas and money.
And it is a good customer of the armaments industry, which flourishes in wartime.
Corruption is at play, as it was when the World Cup was awarded to Qatar, where France will soon be defending the title it won in Moscow.
There are many conflicts between France and the Islamic world.
But Bin Salman made no conditions for his visit, came to terms with "Islamophobia" and did not appear to have any other moral qualms.
Emmanuel Macron, who received him, had it very well.
Nevertheless, he studiously overlooked the fact that, in an emergency, Bin Salman silences journalists even more brutally than Putin.
Macron, human rights advocate and pioneer of the restitution of stolen art, was probably a little ashamed of the way his best – state-salaried – experts, including the Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez, had humiliated Abu Dhabi.
The desert state pays dearly for its Louvre branch, which sold treasures stolen to a Parisian mafia with forged papers in Egypt and Syria.
Abu Dhabi was ripped off like the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev allegedly by his Geneva art dealer Yves Bouvier, whom he employed and paid as a consultant.
They are the two biggest art affairs of the decade: The Louvre scandal is in the investigation stage.
Rybolowlev and Bouvier fight each other in court.
"I'm ruined," wails Bouvier, the fallen "King of Geneva's bonded warehouse."
He has lost a billion, he is “off the market” and Rybolowlew wants to “kill” him.
He opened the most spectacular deal of the century for him with Leonardo's "Salvator Mundi": At 450 million dollars, it became the most expensive painting in the world - Rybolowlev's profit was more than 300 million.
"I'm leading ten to zero," Bouvier boasted in the "Tribune de Genève".
He won every lawsuit and lost not a single one.
The ultimate goal of his ruined life is to render the Russians "harmless".
However, he has now lost a case:
The Geneva court must open investigations against Bouvier.
Above all, this means that the legal battle will continue for years.
The reaction to the verdict in Paris remains a state secret.
The Louvre did not want the controversial "Salvator Mundi" and judged it rather disparagingly.
Leonardo's "Savior of the World" is probably hanging in Muhammad Bin Salman's yacht.