Edgar Davids Art Fraud Case Delayed Again

The long-running fraud case over Edgar Davids’s missing modern art collection took another twist in London on Friday, as the woman who admitted pawning his works failed to appear for sentencing – nearly five years after she was first charged.

Nabila Habiby, 39, was due to be sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court for defrauding the former Netherlands and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder out of a £188,000 collection of contemporary art. Instead, the court was told she was in a hospital bed in Belgium.

A £188,000 collection, £31,500 in loans

Davids had entrusted Habiby, a wealth manager, with the keys to his home in Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, in December 2014 as he prepared to move to an apartment in central London. Among the possessions she was supposed to place in storage was his prized collection of works by artists Paul Insect and Ron English, bought from the Opera Gallery in New York between 2006 and 2012.

Those pieces never made it into storage.

Habiby took 37 paintings and artworks to pawnbrokers, securing £31,500 in loans against a collection later valued at around £188,000. The shops then sold the art on to collectors around the world.

Davids only discovered the loss when Habiby defaulted on the loans and one buyer, having legitimately acquired a piece, contacted him to ask about its history. By then, much of the collection had scattered. Some works have since been recovered, but 25 pieces remain missing.

Guilty pleas, but no sentence

After an investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police into fraud offences dating back to 2015 and 2016, Habiby was charged and eventually pleaded guilty in September 2025 to two counts of fraud. She was released on bail, warned she could face up to 34 months in prison.

Sentence, though, has proved elusive.

An attempt to conclude the case in March collapsed when Habiby tried – unsuccessfully – to withdraw her guilty pleas. Friday’s hearing was listed as the latest opportunity to finally impose punishment.

Instead, her barrister, Hannah Thomas, stood alone.

“I received correspondence this morning from my solicitor, at around 9.30am, saying on her way to the airport to come here she had been hit on the head by a piece of luggage en route,” Thomas told the court.

“She had a concussion, since she passed out, and was taken to the hospital where she remains on a drip.”

Judge unimpressed by “inadequate” evidence

Habiby now lives in Belgium, and the court was presented with medical evidence from there to support her absence. Judge Emma Deacon was not convinced.

She described the documentation as “inadequate”, questioning whether it justified missing a long-scheduled sentencing hearing in a case already dragging on for years.

Even so, Deacon agreed to adjourn, deciding that the original judge who took the guilty pleas should be the one to hand down sentence. That judge will now have the task of drawing a line under a saga that began with Davids trusting a professional adviser with his home and his art – and ended with his collection broken up across the globe.

Almost five years on from the first charge, the clock keeps ticking. Habiby has been ordered to attend court for sentencing on September 23 and must provide a full medical report to explain her latest no-show.

The art may never be fully recovered. The question now is whether the justice system can finally catch up.