Police Seize Stash of Masterpieces Belonging to Founder of Dairy Company Parmalat

ROME.- Italian tax police said Saturday that they had seized works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and other giants of art in a crackdown on assets hidden by the disgraced founder of the collapsed dairy company Parmalat. Authorities estimated the 19 masterpieces stashed away in attics and basements were valued at some euro100 million ($150 million). Parma Prosecutor Gerardo Laguardia said that, based on wiretapped phone conversations, officials believed at least one of the paintings hidden by Calisto Tanzi was [...]

12 Detained in Paris over Stolen Painting

PARIS (AP).- French police detained 12 people in a sweep of a respected Paris auction house Wednesday after finding a stolen Courbet painting worth euro900,000 ($1.3 million) at an employee’s house. Police raids on the Hotel Drouot, its warehouses and homes of employees uncovered other small artworks believed to have been stolen, a police official said. Twelve people — an auctioneer, eight commission agents and three of their family members — were detained and questioned Wednesday by investigators from the [...]

Looted Artifacts Being Returned to Italy from New York City

NEW YORK, NY (AP).- Two stolen ancient artifacts are being returned to Italy from New York City. An Italian government representative is taking possession of them at a ceremony Wednesday. The artifacts are a Pompeii plaster wall painting and a Corinthian vase for mixing water and wine. They were recovered by immigration and customs officials in June. Both items had been scheduled for auction in New York before they were discovered to have been stolen. Immigration officials said the vase [...]

The full history of the Mona Lisa Robbery

On August 21, 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in the world, was stolen right off the wall of the Louvre (famous museum in Paris, France). It was such an inconceivable crime, that the Mona Lisa wasn’t even noticed missing until the following day. Everyone had been talking about the glass panes that museum officials at the Louvre had put in front of several of their most important paintings. Museum officials stated it was [...]

Art Crime Facts

Art crime represents the third highest grossing criminal enterprise worldwide, behind only drugs and arms trafficking. It brings in $2-6 billion per year, most of which goes to fund international organized crime syndicates. Most art crime since the 1960s is perpetrated either by, or on behalf of, international organized crime syndicates. They either use stolen art for resale, or to barter on a closed black market for an equivalent value of goods or services. Individually instigated art crimes are rare, and [...]

Art Crime Special article

Picasso. De Goya. Rembrandt… The works of these artists and countless others have fallen prey to crime. By vandalism, theft or other ways, the art world is not exempt from the world of crime. According to Teressa Davis, managing director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), there are many different types of art crime which includes looting archeological sites, smuggling antiquities and theft from public and private collections. “There is no one type of art crime, [...]

Former Guggenheim Bilbao Finance Chief Sentenced for Thefts

MADRID— After admitting to stealing more than €486,000 ($775,000) from the Guggenheim Bilbao museum, Roberto Caersolo, the museum’s former finance director, has been sentenced by a Spanish court in Madrid to 32 months in prison. Officials at the museum fired Caersolo last year after an internal audit discovered the missing sums of money. In a letter to museum director Juan Ignacio Vidarte after his firing, the one-time finance chief revealed his theft, writing, “Since I could no longer live with [...]

Edvard Munch artwork stolen in Norway

OSLO — Thieves stole a valuable artwork by Edvard Munch from an Oslo art dealer in the latest of a string of art heists targeting work by the famous Norwegian expressionist, police said Friday. One or more thieves stole “Historien” — or “History” — from Nyborgs Kunst in downtown Oslo after smashing one of the dealership’s windows with a rock, police spokeswoman Unni Groendal said. The hand-colored lithograph, printed in 1914, is worth “in the millions” of kroner (hundreds of [...]

Ex Real Madrid President, Lorenzo Sanz, Arrested Over Art Exports

The ex President of Real Madrid, the businessman Lorenzo Sanz, has been arrested for trying to take works of art out of Spain illegally. Reports indicate he gave a statement to the police in a central Madrid police station at Retiro on Wednesday night, and was allowed to go home afterwards, but with charges outstanding. His arrest by the patrimonial department of the National Police is in connection with the movement of art to Italy. The ex President of Real [...]