It is a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance depicting one of the most celebrated images in civilisation. Reportedly once owned by Imelda Marcos, Madonna and Child (1485), from the studio of Sandro Botticelli, was valued at $10m when it was the subject of a lengthy court case to prove ownership. But it now transpires that this was merely another twist in the painting’s recent turbulent history. Six years on from when the case was finally resolved, the purported co-owner of the company that was awarded the painting has no idea what happened to it. The art work was last displayed in a 2007 exhibition at the New York gallery of Lawrence Salander. Once described as the Bernie Madoff of the art world, Salander fleeced fine art investors, including John McEnroe, and artists, notably the abstract expressionist Robert De Niro Sr, father of the actor, out of millions of dollars. After Salander was jailed in 2010, his creditors waged messy battles to prove they owned works he had stolen from them. One of the most notable of these was the Botticelli. In 2014, two New York judges ruled that the masterpiece should be returned to an obscure company called Kraken Investments. Asked about the future of the painting, its former owner, Ronald Fuhrer told Artnet News: “My advice would be to try to sell it. If a painting gives you such trouble – in this case such unheard of trouble – that means that it wants to go away, maybe it’s not supposed to be.” But now a cache of leaked documents relating to a defunct Jersey-based trust company called La Hougue, obtained by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network of journalists and shared with the Observer, raises questions about Kraken, which was based in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. The documents reveal that the ultimate beneficial owners of the company were John Dick II and Tanya Dick-Stock, the children of John Dick, an 82-year-old Canadian businessman. However, astonishingly, Tanya Dick-Stock was unaware of this until the documents were discovered. “Tanya feels that her identity has been stolen and used for nefarious purposes,” a spokesman for Dick-Stock said. “The painting was acquired without her knowledge or consent.” In March, the Observer reported that Dick-Stock was suing her father to reclaim assets that she believes are hers. She alleges that Kraken was a financial vehicle for her father, claims he denies. It is not known whether her brother knew that he was the co-owner of Kraken but there is no suggestion of wrongdoing on his part. Among the leaked documents is an invoice from Richard Wigley, an adviser to La Hougue, to Fuhrer for the “creation of documents” relating to the latter’s divorce in 2005. Wigley has admitted in court to fabricating documents although his lawyers have since disputed this. Intriguingly, a key document in the leaked La Hougue files, dated March 2003, reveals that Kraken took ownership of the Botticelli, which was then valued at $2.2m, to cover an outstanding loan of Furher’s. But, given Wigley’s admission to fabricating documents, some question whether this agreement was genuine. When approached by journalists from Der Spiegel who asked whether the loan document had been faked so that Fuhrer could remove the painting from his list of assets when he was getting divorced, both men did not respond to requests for comment. The Observer emailed Fuhrer a list of questions relating to the documents. When telephoned, Fuhrer responded: “I’m not prepared to talk to you. Thank you, good day.” Since the documents were shared by the EIC, media organisations around the world have published articles suggesting that La Hougue perpetrated a large scale fraud in Jersey involving the creation of fake loans and agreements to hide the theft of cash and other assets from scores of trusts. But amid the fallout Kraken’s fate remains opaque. No one seems to know what has happened to it or even if it still exists. And as for the $10m question: where is the Madonna and Child? “No we don’t know what happened to it or who owns the painting,” the spokesman for Dick-Stock said. “But we intend to commit resource and energy to finding out.”