The strange case of the bogus Botero. (Fernando Botero)

'We destroyed it with knives!" That's how MaryAnne Martin, a prominent Latin American art dealer, gleefully describes her role in shredding a painting that had been showcased a year earlier on the cover of the spring 1993 catalogue published by Christie's, the famous New York auction house.

The bizarre act was not some avant-garde ritual but rather the official destruction of a forged work of world-renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero. The ravaging of the fraudulent "Dancers" was carried out by a small group of lawyers and art experts in a Manhattan office. Meanwhile,