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 this situation, I have decided to confess the facts to you.”

Guggenheim Bilbao

Vidarte has confirmed that Caersolo had returned about $462,000 of the funds to the museum, which had been stolen in a series of small transactions between 1998 to 2008. Caersolo has said that he produced fake checks and bank transfers to conceal his subterfuge during that period, and that he doctored reports on the museum’s annual financial standing in 2005 to escape detection.

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