When the Victor and Sally Ganz collection of modern art masterpieces hit the auction block at Christie's in 1997, it was game-changing sale. Prices for art reached a new level, with Pablo Picasso's vibrant Women of Algiers (version O) fetching a then-astonishing $31.9 million.

The Manhattan collector-couple had purchased the painting for $7,000 some 40 years earlier. (It sold in 2015 for an auction record $179 million.)

But what is just coming out about that epic moment in the art market nearly two decades ago is the actual owner who sold the Ganz collection at auction.

From the millions of documents known as the Panama Papers, swiped from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, is another startling revelation. A British financier possibly "flipped" the Ganz art, quietly. 

The Guardian reported about the Ganz sale timeline:

In a secret deal six months earlier, an offshore company whose bank account was controlled by the secretive billionaire currency trader Joe Lewis had bought all the most valuable works. On the same day, it had contracted to auction them at Christie’s, to be marketed as the Ganz collection.

It appeared Lewis had taken a $168m gamble that the art market was ready for liftoff. It would eventually pay off in multiple ways.

The story behind the auction that set a new record for the sale of a private collection can now be told for the first time.