Art Hostage Services
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The Art Hostage team undertakes a wide range of services, including due diligence, collection conservation and management, risk assessment and security as well as legal issues, recovery and dispute resolution involving art and artifacts. Through partnerships with leading organizations, the Art Hostage team can provide a complete service for all aspects of collecting and protecting art.
There has been much chatter recently about the Cezanne stolen from the Ashmolean Museum on New Years eve 1999-New Years day 2000.
Rumours it was being held in the North of England, Newcastle was mentioned as well as the usual rumours of it being held as collateral.
Currently it is allegedly being held in the Republic of Ireland and the price for recovery is 20,000 euros. Just 0.2% of the current value of £8 million.
The Ashmolean Museum has refused to offer any reward or fee for recovery and Police have refused to engage with Charlie Hill other than if he is willing to just give names, location etc, whereby Police can go arrest a suspect and recover the Ashmolean Cezanne and certainly not pay a single penny for that recovery.
The BBC Radio Four programme Steve Punt PI has recorded an episode about the Ashmolean Cezanne, which Art Hostage was asked to contribute too.
However, knowing the way the BBC acts and the kind of negative narrative they pursue, Art Hostage declined.
Charlie Hill did however contribute and was recorded whilst taking a stroll through the Ashmolean Museum several weeks ago.
The latest is the Steve Punt PI programme has been delayed because of the current undercover operation, which has failed, according to BBC sources, to try and recover the Ashmolean Cezanne and arrest those who have information about the Ashmolean Cezanne.
Charlie Hill has finally succumbed to the Dick Ellis, of (QUINTONS FARM HOUSE GROVE LANE ASHFIELD STOWMARKET IP146LZ)
format of setting up people and was trying desperately to gain a glimpse of the Cezanne so Police could swoop and recover it and arrest those within a mile radius.
Sadly, for Charlie Hill and the Ashmolean Museum, this latest sting attempt, according to sources at the BBC, failed and the Cezanne remains elusive as ever.
So, if the news had broken the Ashmolean Cezanne had been recovered and arrests had of been made, those involved would only have had themselves to blame, as it has been pointed out time and time again
"There is no reward, no fee, no money at all for the recovery of the Ashmolean Cezanne and anyone thinking they can get any kind of payment is in for a rude awakening and will be arrested, charged and taken through the courts"
Anyone purporting to represent the Ashmolean Museum, Insurance company etc is always going to be Undercover Police and as soon as there was the slightest glimpse of the Ashmolean Cezanne or the whereabouts of the Ashmolean Cezanne had of been deduced, Police would have swooped and arrests would have followed.
This is common knowledge amongst the art crime underworld and has proven the case time and time again, so Art Hostage is certainly not revealing anything secret or covert.
Take this failed attempt as a warning that there are no rewards, no fee, no payments of any kind for the recovery of stolen art.
The recent civil court case of the Da Vinci Madonna proved beyond all reasonable doubt, the days of payments for recovering stolen art are well and truly over.
Back-story:
Watching the detective
Sunday 5 August 2001
If
you need to track down a stolen masterpiece, call investigator Charlie
Hill. John Wilson goes undercover (no cameras please...) with the
scourge of international art thievery
A west London Greek-Cypriot restaurant on a sultry Saturday night. A
family place. Three birthday parties are in full swing, toasts are
joined from every part of the room, plates are hurled to the floor and
the man on the synthesiser pumps out a steady medley of Hellenic hits.
(This west London Greek-Cypriot restaurant is owned by the nephew of the infamous Bertie Smalls, the first Police Supergrass, with the code name Colin and Charlie Hill's top informant.)
If
Thomas Crown really existed, you wouldn't find him here. Neither would
you bump into Dr No, Captain Nemo or Raffles on their nights off from
international art thievery. But according to my dining companion,
Charlie Hill, one of the world's leading private investigators of stolen
treasures, this ostentatious suburban eatery, owned by Charlie Hill's top informant, Colin, the nephew of the infamous Police Supergrass Bertie Smalls, is a favourite hang-out
for a pool of villains who marvel at these fictional thieves' taste for
Monet rather than money.
'They've seen the movies - Pierce Brosnan
in the Thomas Crown remake or Sean Connery in Entrapment - and think
it's cool, sexy,' Hill tells me. 'Look, even the less intelligent ones
realise they can't sell a Monet or Cézanne to the local art dealer or
ask Sotheby's to get the best offer. But that doesn't mean the work is
worthless. It's about kudos. If you arrive for a drugs deal with
masterpiece in your boot, the other team know you're serious.'
I
head for the lavatory to check whether the tiny minidisc recorder hidden
in the lining of my jacket is still working and to make sure the
button-hole microphone is picking up anything we're saying above the
plate-smashing and drunken cheers. I rejoin Charlie Hill, try to affect a
look of nonchalant disdain and not spill hummus down my shirt as I
steer the pin mike in the direction of his stage whispers. Who are those
heavies in the sports jackets?
'Serbs; one of them I know well.
He doesn't know me luckily, except by reputation.' The crop-headed man
in the fawn three-button is aware of our attention, but probably doesn't
realise he has been identified as an international art thief by a
private investigator.
'He was recently doing time in a Belgian
prison for stealing a Van Dyck,' says Hill casually. 'Actually, it
turned out to be the work of a student of Van Dyck, so when he was
arrested and then found out it wasn't even the real thing, he felt
doubly ripped off. I didn't know he was out already.'
The company
the Serb chooses to keep - in the restaurant that will remain nameless
for health and safety reasons - is multinational. Amid the Greek
families celebrating noisily lurk small groups of middle-aged men,
hunched conspiratorially across tables and casting an occasional wary
eye round the vast room. This used to be part of Hill's uncharted
territory when he was a detective with the Metropolitan Police's art and
antiques squad. Working undercover, Hill would pitch up at the bar to
make casual conversation with whoever was lurking.
'To them, I
was a bar-room bore who worked in insurance. Very often I'd be offered
jewellery and antiques. Then the eastern European crowd arrived and
there'd be talk of religious icons and antiques, looted from churches.
That stuff goes on here all the time, but occasionally you get the big
fish, the ones who are looking to offload a painting, maybe worth
millions.'
Hill's greatest claim to fame, though one he couldn't
publicly take the credit for at the time, is as the undercover Scotland
Yard art and antiques squad chief who recovered Edvard Munch's The
Scream from the thieves who raided the national museum in 1994.
Cheekily,
the robbers had celebrated their heist by leaving in the space vacated
by that icon of existential angst a postcard depicting three men doubled
up in mirth at some private joke. On the card was scrawled the message:
'Thanks for the poor security.'
The thieves stopped laughing when
Hill, posing as a bow-tied representative of the Getty Museum and
carrying a £500,000 'ransom' in a suitcase, was handed the painting and
called in Norwegian police and Interpol officers to complete the sting.
Though
Hill is quick to dismiss the James Bond parallels, his story - of
fooling the robbers with a steady patter of Californian-accented
art-speak, of seeing the Munch carried up from the cellar of a
fjord-side chalet, of verifying its authenticity by the distinctive
wax-splatter on one corner of the canvas ('Munch had blown out a candle
as he was painting it') - is gripping stuff.
The Scream is back at
home in Oslo. For a while, it joined a virtual gallery that, if
collected together in a single room, would shame the Tates, Guggenheims
and Gettys: 355 Picassos, 250 Chagalls, 180 Dalis, 120 Rembrandts and
115 Renoirs are among the staggering list of missing masterpieces.
Hill
talks of stolen paintings, particularly Cézanne's Auvers-sur-Oise,
lifted from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in an audacious millennium
eve raid, Titian's Rest on the Flight to Egypt, taken from Longleat
House, and two Turners, now in the hands of Serbian gangsters after
being snatched from a Frankfurt gallery while on loan, with the passion
of an art collector.
Acres of empty wall space has been left in
galleries and homes around the world. Helping to refill those gaps gives
him a purpose in life, Hill claims. The Charles Hill Partnership is an
international detective agency specialising in tracing stolen art. Its
website offers investigative services and advice on 'sensitive problems
that fall outside the scope of mainstream advisers'.
Having served
with the Met for 20 years, Charlie Hill knows that the police, whose
scaled-down art squad now investigates art crime only within the London
region, work within tightly reined financial and ethical limitations. By
talking directly to the villains, and by making it clear to others
within the art-crime community that informers will be paid, Hill knows
he's wandering into tricky legal territory.
The fine ethical line
that distinguishes a reward, which could end up in the hands of close
associates of those holding the loot, and a ransom, which all agree must
never be paid, is often difficult to discern.
There's £100,000 of
Lord Bath's money up for grabs if anyone will point him in the exact
direction of Titian's Rest on the Flight to Egypt, which was ripped from
the walls of his ancestral home in 1995. It's widely accepted by
art-theft investigators that the early sixteenth-century Italian
masterpiece once admired by visitors to Longleat House is currently in
the hands of new curators within the travelling community.
People
within the same community, maybe neighbours or cousins, are also looking
after Jean-Baptiste Oudry's The White Duck on behalf of Lord
Cholmondeley until it's returned to Houghton Hall in Norfolk. Though he
won't go into detail about the investigation, Hill reveals that he has
spoken to those holding the Titian, though any appeal for return on
aesthetic or altruistic grounds is hopeless. 'They just wouldn't
understand,' he sighs.
The formation of the Charles Hill
Partnership meant that the 'art-risk consultant' had to break cover
after years in the murky sub-strata of criminal investigation. Hill used
to adopt a variety of pseudonyms and guises, his favourite involving
the bow-tie and the American accent. He preferred not to be photographed
for this article.
Sipping Greek wine and dipping into his meze in
the west London thieves' eatery, Hill now looks every inch the
successful insurance salesman, in pastel colours, thick-rimmed specs and
middle-aged spread.
The Charles Hill business website includes a
CV that refers to a former career as a soldier. 'Oh, yes, that was
Vietnam,' he explains, deadpan. 'Really?' 'Yes, really.'
The son
of an American intelligence officer, Hill was born in Britain, moved to
Washington as a boy and, after sitting out high-school classes in the
company of a young, wannabe journalist called Al Gore, enlisted for the
army.
While teenage contemporaries were marching on the Pentagon,
Charlie Hill was stalking the jungles near the Cambodian border with a
M16 in one hand and a book in the other. For the year he served with the
173rd Airborne Brigade - 'shooting people, being shot at, but never
getting hit' - he was nicknamed 'the Professor' and regarded as a
talisman by colleagues who marvelled at his ability to avoid the
bullets.
Having volunteered for Vietnam to 'satisfy my
intellectual curiosity', Hill won a Fulbright scholarship to Trinity
College, Dublin, to study modern history. Spiritual curiosity nudged him
next in the direction of a theology degree at King's College, London.
Hill then joined the police. He worked undercover with various crime
squads from the mid-Eighties, most notably the art and antiques squad,
which, between 1994 and 1996, he led as chief superintendent.
As
we talk, Hill glances around. He was introduced to this restaurant by a
safe-cracker 12 years ago. In the old days, alongside the thieves,
fraudsters and drug dealers, you'd find half of the CID sniffing round
for leads, rubbing shoulders with the rogues.
'Police work? It's
all about paper-work and conviction targets now,' he sniffs. Just as he
begins to head off down memory lane, Hill interrupts himself. He has
spotted another face, a man whose plans to lift the Alfred Jewel from
the Ashmolean were rumbled.
The plan was resurrected on 31
December 1999, with Cézanne's Auvers-sur-Oise as the new target. The
execution was perfect: an elegant drop through the skylights, a
smokescreen using a grenade and a hand-held electric fan to fill the
gallery with dense white smoke, all timed to coincide with millennial
fireworks on the streets of Oxford.
'If that guy hasn't got the Cézanne, he knows a man who does,' says Hill.
As
we head for door, I'm conscious that the wire of my mike has slipped
and is swinging loose. I glance nervously around. Ashmolean man is
laughing into his beer at some private joke.
• John Wilson presents Stealing Beauty on Tuesday, 8pm, BBC R4
It has been bought to the attention of Art Hostage that Kenneth Noye may have already been released from Jail.
Art Hostage cannot confirm this, but would like to throw it out for comments.
John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer was shot at least six times and suffered
wounds to his back, chest and arms - so how did police think he was NOT
murdered?
John Palmer was found dead at his home in South Weald, Essex in June
Post-mortem revealed the 64-year-old had died of gunshot wounds to chest
It is understood the hitman shot Palmer six times with a silenced pistol
Palmer regularly wore body armour because he thought he was in danger
John
'Goldfinger' Palmer was shot approximately six times in the chest, back
and arms, in what has been classified as a professional hit.
The
64-year-old career criminal was targeted outside his family home in
South Weald, Essex on June 24. Initially, local police said his death
was a result of complications following recent surgery but a post mortem
examination later found that he had been murdered.
It has been reported that the gangster regularly wore body armour when away from his home to protect himself from rivals.
+5
John Palmer had a cadre of corrupt police officers who tipped him off about major criminal investigations
+5
The 64-year-old gangster was murdered at his Essex home, pictured, by a very experienced hitman
+5
Palmer, nicknamed 'Goldfinger', is believed to have smelted the £26m in gold stolen during the Brink's Mat job
Emergency
services initially thought his injuries were due to complications
relating to recent gall bladder surgery. However, a post-mortem
discovered that he had been shot repeatedly.
The Times said the murder weapon was probably a handgun equipped with a silencer.
Essex
Police have been criticised over the delays in launching the murder
inquiry due to the failure to spot the numerous gunshot wounds.
Palmer, 64, had a long list of potential enemies as a result of his marathon criminal career.
Since
his death, it has emerged that he had been protected by a group of six
corrupt police officers who would supply him with information on ongoing
criminal investigations and rival gangs.
Although
it has been claimed that he may have been working with the authorities
to prevent his extradition to Spain, which may have prompted a rival
organisation to silence him.
Speculation arose his death had been ordered by underworld figures who feared he was being primed to inform on other criminals.
Palmer
was said to be 'on the verge' of helping police in ongoing
investigations in exchange for having his looming 15 year jail term
lifted.
He
was due to be put behind bars in Spain after being charged with fraud
and money laundering in May but was allowed to return to the UK in
'incredibly unusual' bail conditions.
One source said the terms of his bail suggested his role as a potential informant for British authorities, telling The Sunday Times he otherwise would not have been allowed to leave Spain.
'That alone would indicate that Palmer was, or was on the verge of, assisting law enforcement,' they said.
Palmer's death has been shrouded in mystery and allegations of police misgivings.
+5
Palmer and wife Marnie in Tenerife with their daughter Sarah. He left her for his Tenerife mistress Christine Ketley
The
64-year-old was found dead in the back garden of the home he shared
with his long-term partner Christine Ketley, on June 24, shortly before
6pm.
Paramedics
initially ruled out foul play, claiming his death was consistent with
existing health problems following a recent surgery.
Several
days later it was revealed he had been shot repeatedly, with Scotland
Yard launching a murder inquiry as former force bosses lambasted the
overall police handling of his death. One retired chief went as far as
to say the delay may have cost the investigation its crime scene.
+5
Accusations
of corruption have since emerged as old claims that Palmer was involved
in some of the most prolific crimes in Britain's history stand
reiterated.
Among the allegations is one which places Palmer at the heart of the country's largest ever cash robbery.
It was claimed Palmer held a central role in the 2006 Securitas raid in Heathrow during which thieves stole £52million.
The
heist was a joint venture between British and Eastern European crime
syndicates, with Palmer fingered as one of its engineers.
‘Palmer
brought the team together after agreeing to finance the setting-up of
the job,’ said one former professional robber, who knows many of the
Securitas gang members.
Some
of the gang were arrested and soon suspected of turning on one another
to cut themselves a deal with police. The fallout sparked an ongoing
civil war between British and foreign criminals, the source said, with
Palmer blamed for much of the unrest.
Another
extraordinary strand in the unfolding story surrounding his death
claims Palmer was killed by hitmen wanted for the murder of the Great
Train Robber, Charlie Wilson,
‘Both
Charlie and Palmer were murdered in the gardens of their homes, and it
was clear that the killer was sending out a message that he could strike
any place at any time,’ said one retired Flying Squad officer in touch
with the current investigation.
Others claimed Palmer was another victim of the 'Brinks Mat curse' which has seen 20 criminals die in suspicious circumstances.
The
father-of-three had earned his nickname 'Goldfinger' from his suspected
involvement in the 1983 raid during which £3million of gold bullion was
stolen.
Palmer,
a scrap metal dealer turned jeweller and gold trader, kept a smelter at
his former home near Bath and it was here that police long suspected
some of the gold was melted down for resale.
But
he was acquitted of dishonestly handling stolen goods at the Old Bailey
after telling the jury he did not know where the gold had come from.
Following the heist, a number of well known criminals died amid simmering violence and revenge.
Their deaths all linked in some way to the raid, the men all became known as victims of the curse.
Gangster John 'Goldfinger' Palmer 'suffered six gunshot wounds'
Body of notorious criminal was riddled with bullets, heaping pressure on
police and paramedics who thought he had died of natural causes
Police launch a murder inquiry after death of John 'Goldfinger' PalmerPhoto: Rex
John "Goldfinger" Palmer, one of Britain's most notorious criminals, suffered six gunshot wounds when he waskilled in his garden, it has emerged.
The gangland figure, who was linked to the Brinks-Mat robbery, was
reportedly shot in the back and both arms as well as suffering fatal
chest wounds.
But despite
suffering six wounds, only five bullets have been recovered, according
to The Times, as police continue to search the garden of his home in
South Weald, near Brentwood, Essex.
The development will heap further pressure on police and paramedics to explain why the 64-year-old was reported to have died of natural causeswhen his body was found on June 24.
Essex Police did not launch a murder inquiry until six days after his
death, when a routine post mortem examination found he had been shot in
the chest.
John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, with his former wife Marnie in 1987, was said to have had a £300 million fortune
Palmer's brother Malcolm, 68, said last week that it was "ridiculous"
neither police nor paramedicas had not spotted he had been murdered.
Palmer had recently had gall bladder surgery and it is believed his
killer might have used the operation injuries to disguise the bullet
wound.
Police sources have since said the murder bore
all the hallmarks of a professional hit and detectives are now liaising
with the Flying Squad to see if Palmer may have played a role in the dramatic raid on a Hatton Garden safe deposit vaultover the Easter weekend. The weapon is thought to be a handgun, and it is believed a silencer was used.
Palmer, who was tried for melting down gold bars stolen in the£26million Brinks-Mat theft of bullion and jewelleryfrom a warehouse at Heathrow Airport, is the eighth person with close links to the 1983 robbery to be shot dead.
He was once described as Britain's richest criminal with a fortune of
£300million, and was jailed at the Old Bailey in 2001 over his
involvement in a timeshare swindle, which cost thousands of people their
life savings.
But he was best known for his connection
to the Brink's-MAT heist, for which he was tried in 1987. He was said
to have melted down bullion from the robbery in his back garden, but
denied knowing the bullion was stolen and was acquitted.
At the time of his death he was facing charges of money laundering and possession of firearms in Tenerife.
It has been claimed that he may also have had links to organised crime in Russia, according to newspaper reports in the 1990s.
Spanish security services believed that his head bodyguard was once a colonel in the KGB.
EXCLUSIVE: The 'TOWIE' luxury pawnbrokers run by murdered 'top gangster' John Palmer
MURDERED gangland boss John 'Goldfinger' Palmer was
involved in a luxury pawnbrokers - selling £25k designer watches,
diamonds and gold bars - loved by B-list celebrities at the time of his
death, it can be revealed.
•
ESSEXPAWNSTARS•TWITTER
John Palmer, the shop and gold and watches advertised onlineThe
65-year-old, who earned his nickname due to his role in melting down
the bullion from the £26million Brink's-Mat robbery at Heathrow Airport
in 1983, was once dubbed Britain's richest criminal.
His killing is currently being probed by murder detectives, after Essex Police faced criticism for originally ruling his death a "non suspicious."
Six days later, a post-mortem found he had been blasted in the chest with a shotgun.
Officers are currently investigating several lines of inquiry over Palmer's death, including the gangster's businesses.
Now, exclusively revealed by Express.co.uk, it has been found Palmer - together with girlfriend Christina Ketley - was behind Essex Pawn Stars in Brentwood, Essex.
The town is most famous for its popularity with stars of reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE).
ESSEXPAWNSTARS•TWITTER
A used watch being offered on Twitter by the shop for £25k
PA
Christina Ketley in 2001The store offers loans against luxury valuables from £1,000 to £100,000.
Palmer,
once ranked 66th on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated
£300million fortune, was said to be one of the country's most successful
crooks with after masterminding a £30million Tenerife-based timeshare
scam.
An investigation by Express.co.uk can reveal Palmer and
Ketley's six UK limited companies owe creditors a total of £914,219,
with a value of -£230,269, according to latest accounts filed to Companies House for 2014.
Essex Pawn Stars owns Twitter and Instagram accounts
festooned with pictures of watches, including luxury brands Cartier and
Rolex, ranging from a few thousand pounds to at least £25,000.
The accounts also promote diamonds and gold bars that have been pawned by rich people apparently having money troubles.
Living
up to his 'Goldfinger' moniker, Palmer's shop advertises Umicore
Feingold pure gold bars at £2,620 for 100g, and pure diamonds for made
to order rings.
Customers include former Another Level singer Dane Bowers.
He tweeted after a visit: "Just been to @Essexpawnstars...need to get saving!"
Celebs following Essex Pawn Stars' Twitter account include TOWIE stars Gemma Collins and Jake Hall, as well as footballers and boxers.
Alarmingly, the firm has "permission" from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to lend cash.
The
tightly-regulated activity must involve professionals meeting "fit and
proper person" tests and signing anti-money laundering regulations.
A spokesman for the National Pawnbrokers Association (NPA), a voluntary trade body, said granting permission raised questions of how thorough checks had been, as they were usually very stringent.
ESSEXPAWNSTARS•TWITTER
Diamonds also on sale there
DANEBOWERS•TWITTER
Dane Bowers Tweets after visitHe said about 90 per cent of pawnbrokers were members of the NPA.
Referring
to Essex Pawn Stars, he added: "Members sign a commitment to honour our
strict code of conduct. None of these individuals or businesses have
ever been a member."
The FCA refused to answer specific questions
or confirm if it was aware of Palmer and Ketley's criminal convictions
when Essex Pawn Stars was approved last April.
At a 1987 trial Palmer convinced the jury he had not known the Brink's-Mat gold he smelted was stolen. He was later acquitted.
In
May 2001 he was jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey for
masterminding the timeshare swindle and Ketley, who was convicted of two
counts of conspiracy to defraud, got a two-year suspended sentence.
In 2005, Palmer was declared bankrupt, owing £3.5million.
Trustees were still trying to secure funds for victims in 2013, according to an update report filed by accountants Irwin Mitchell.
In July 2007 Palmer and Ketley were arrested by Spanish police, on suspicion of fraud and money laundering.
ESSEXPAWNSTARS•TWITTER
An array of expensive watches available through the shop
Just been to @Essexpawnstars...need to get saving!
Former Another Level singer Dane Bowers
Their pawnbroking enterprise began while they remained under investigation.
Due
to Palmer's bankruptcy, Ketley is the registered owner of the Brentwood
home they shared and, on paper, runs all their UK business interests.
In the 2001 trial, Palmer admitted Ketley "worked to his orders."
A source said: "He couldn't have his name on anything after the bankruptcy, but just ran things behind the scenes."
In 2011 the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) granted Ketley a "consumer credit licence", which allowed her to run a pawnbrokers and to loan cash.
This was despite her background and connections to Palmer.
The OFT ceased to exist in March 2014, and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which took over the role.
Since April 2014 the FCA
has allowed the firm "interim permission" to carry on as a pawnbroker
and lend money, pending a full application.
Ketley is the firm's "approved person", meaning she is responsible for compliance.
Palmer was charged by Spanish authorities in May with new fraud and money laundering offences and a firearms count.
Ketley was also charged with fraud at the same time in connection with the same inquiry.
The
FCA refused to say why it approved the interim permission, if it had
been aware of her background with Palmer, or if it would investigate the
issuing of the licence now this has surfaced.
A spokeswoman said: "We are unable to comment on individuals or firms."
However,
she added: "All firms who wished to continue providing consumer credit
services had to have interim permission to operate.
TIMSTEWARTNEWS
One of the last pictures of John Palmer before he was killed
ESSEXPAWNSTARS•TWITTER
Just a small amount of the watches advertised on Instagram"This enables firms to continue operating until such a time as they are assessed for FCA authorisation.
"During
the authorisation process they will have to demonstrate that they are
operating within the rules and meet the high standards expected of
them.
"Any firms who have interim permission to carry out
consumer credit activities are starting to be assessed for
authorisation. At this time, firms’ business models will be assessed in
detail, they will have to demonstrate they comply with the rules and
that they treat customers fairly.
"In terms of suitability, firms
will also have to demonstrate the competence and ability of management
and that their affairs are conducted in an appropriate manner. The FCA
will also review any criminal records, if appropriate."
Essex Police launched a murder probe six days after Palmer's body was found at their £800,000 property in Essex on June 24.
Officers
were criticised for orginally classing his death as "non-suspicious",
before a post-mortem found he had been blasted in the chest with a
shotgun.
One theory over Palmer's death suggests he may have been about to turn "supergrass" before an upcoming Spanish fraud trial.
An
Essex Police spokeswoman said: "Detectives are following several main
lines of inquiry and will not comment on specific historical incidents."
Palmer's relatives have asked through Essex Police that they are not contacted by media while they grieve.
Police hunt gangster ‘worse than Krays’ on the run with wife after shootout
ONE of Britain’s most violent gangsters is thought to be on the run with his wife after a shootout.
GETTY•SWNS
Patrick and Constance Adams could be in Holland or SpainModern-day
Bonnie and Clyde, Patrick ‘Patsy’ Adams and his wife Constance could be
hiding out in Holland or Spain following an attempted murder.
A 51-year-old man was shot in the chest as he sat in his black BMW X5 after being approached by a man and woman in Islington, north London, in 2013.
The victim was heard screaming for help as he crawled from his car.
Patsy and Constance fled soon after.
Patsy, named ‘The Enforcer’, is part of the feared Adams family, once dubbed by police as ‘worse than the Krays’.
Along
with his brother, Terry Adams, branded the ‘Godfather’, their
drug-fuelled criminal empire is said to have earned them £200million.
The family, from Islington, rose to notoriety in the Eighties and Nineties and are suspected of being behind up to 25 murders.
While Terry was seen as the king-pin, Patsy was responsible for carrying out brutal and violent orders.
NICHOLAS RAZZELL
Tommy Adams and his brother Patrick were known as the A Team
I remember coming back from a friend's house where I had stayed over the night before
He gained a reputation for using
high-speed motorbikes to carry out murders. After being jailed for seven
years in the Seventies for an armed robbery, he was said to be living
in exile in a walled villa in Torremolinos, Spain.
Now 57, he is wanted by police alongside his wife, 53, following the attempted murder.
European Arrest Warrants have been obtained for the pair.
Det
Insp Glenn Butler, from the Metropolitan Police's Trident and Area
Crime Command, said anyone who knew where the Adams were living should
contact the police immediately.
He said: "It is apparent by the nature of this violent crime that they need to be traced and interviewed by police.
"We treat any information that is passed to us with the greatest of confidence."
Residents
living near where the shootout happened, at about 10am on December 22
2013, at the end of Wyclif Street, have today spoken of their fear.
Terry Adams in 2011 being led to a prison van at City Of London Magistrates Court
I remember coming back from a friend's house where I had stayed over the night before
One neighbour said: "I remember coming back from a friend's house where I had stayed over the night before.
"The BMW was stationery at the end of the road with the window down as I went back into my flat.
"It was certainly a fright when we began hearing what had happened.
"At first I thought this must have been to do with drug dealing.
"It was only really later after I had spoken to other people living nearby what had gone on.
"To think it may have been related to something more serious is quite scary really."
Anyone with information can call police on 0208 3580 711 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Finding and getting back stolen art is far from easy.
The return of the Matisse painting to the heirs of the French Jewish
art collector Paul Rosenberg brought "18 months of torture, fighting
with the German government", Marinello said.
Occasionally, Marinello works as something of a secret agent, like
the time he received a call from a mysterious person called "Darko",
claiming to know the whereabouts of artwork stolen in 2008 in California
and estimated to be worth $20 million (18 million euros).
"I helped set up an operation with the Los Angeles police department
where he was led to believe he was dealing with an insurance executive
when in fact he was dealing with the actual police office," Marinello
said.
The result? Several arrests and the recovery of the artworks.
Undercover operations nevertheless remain the exception and his role is mostly that of a mediator.
As recently as last Thursday, he concluded the return of a sculpture
by the French master Auguste Rodin estimated to be worth $100,000.
There had been little progress since 2011 when the sculpture was
identified at a New York auction after being stolen 24 years ago.
"Within a month we had a settlement agreement," to return the sculpture to its owners, Marinello said.
"This is one of our specialities. Getting in the middle of a case and
finding a way to twist everybody's arm to settle the case".
Looted from warzones
Occasionally the art detective works for free.
This would be the case if, for example, an artist were to be robbed
of his works through a gallery scam. Or the time that a London church
wanted to find a 17th century bust stolen during the Blitz in World War
II.
And sometimes the police ask him for help identifying seized works.
As a token of their gratitude, various police forces have given him
small mementoes like a Polish police cap, an Interpol tie, or a calendar
of Italian Carabinieri.
Marinello's services are also free to museums and he urges cultural
institutions in areas under control of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria to register stolen artworks in the database as soon as possible.
"When museums get taken over or known collections go missing, we can
record them in our database and keep them from reaching the Western
market," Marinello said, describing himself as "horrified" by the
destruction wrought in the region.
"The technology has never been really applied to that area given its
recent history and now you've got people digging with bulldozers," he
said.
Rodin bronze sculpture recovered 24 years after theft from Beverly Hills
The
stolen statue 'Young girl with serpent' was a sculpture by Auguste
Rodin. Rodin, a French sculptor who lived from 1840 until 1917 is known
for his most famous work, "The Thinker," showing a seated man with his
chin on his hand. Cast in multiple versions, the statue can be found in
many places around the world, the one above featured at the Great
Antique Salon exhibition in Kiev. (Reuters)
A £65,000 worth bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin, stolen 24 years ago from a home in Beverly Hills, has finally been recovered.
The
credit for the recovery is being given to a Beverly Hills police
officer who did not give up even after retiring from the force.
The "Young Girl with Serpent" was among the items stolen in a million dollar robbery from the collector's home in 1991.
An
early sketch of Rodin's most famous work, The Kiss, and another
sculpture, The Eternal Spring, were also taken and are still missing.
The
1991 theft of the Rodin statue was facilitated by the housekeeper who
was paid by art thieves for copies of the collector's house keys.
Ten years later, the statue was offered at the New York Christie's auction house and transferred to London for sale in 2011.
Christie's was alerted that the sculpture was stolen and assisted in investigations.
After
four years of deadlock in negotiations between the person who placed
the statue with Christie's and Art Recovery International hired by the
insurance company to broker a deal, the statue has been restored to the
collector.
According to Chris Marinello, CEO of Art
Recovery International it was detective Michael Corren's perseverance
that helped recover the statue.
"Detective Corren was
very impressive in the way he pursued the case. He was kind of like Moby
Dick and the White Whale," Marinello told The Independent.
Experts fear that despite a huge market for stolen Rodins on the black market, thieves might melt the bronze statues down. 'The Thinker'
Rodin,
a French sculptor who lived from 1840 until 1917 is known for his most
famous monumental work, "The Thinker", showing a seated man with his
chin on his hand.
The Thinker too was stolen and damaged
along with six other bronze statues from the garden of the Singer Laren
Museum, the Netherlands in 2007. It was recovered two days and required
considerable restoration.
Valuable bronzes by Paul
Manship (creator of the Prometheus sculpture) and Prince Paul
Troubetzkoy were recovered recently by Art Recovery International, 32
years after being stolen.
Both pieces are worth approximately $150,000 each, nearly six times their value at the time of the theft.
A
painting by Johannes Vermeer, the acclaimed Dutch Golden Age artist
titled The Concert worth $200m is one of the costliest paintings to be
stolen.
The $50m to $55m Poppy Flowers by Vincent Van
Gogh, $5m worth The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, View of
the Sea at Scheveningen by Vincent Van Gogh worth $30m, painting by Paul
Cézanne worth $5m and murals by Maxfield Parrish painted in 1914 with a
combined value of $4m are among a few artworks stolen and not recovered.
John 'Goldfinger' Palmer: Russian mafia hitmen could have been behind gangland murder
Police are investigating whether the timeshare crook was
executed on orders of wealthy Russian client who feared he about to blab
to authorities
Murdered: John Palmer was shot dead
Russian mafia hitmen could have been behind the gangland murder of John “Goldfinger” Palmer.
Police are investigating whether the notorious money-launderer was executed on the orders of a wealthy Russian client who feared he was going to tell all to the authorities.
Palmer, 64, was gunned down at his sprawling Essex home last week but it took six days before police realised he had been shot and launched a murder probe.
The timeshare crook, once worth £300m, ran a sophisticated international money-laundering operation for decades but had particularly close links to major Russian criminals and oligarchs.
Murder scene: Palmer was gunned down at his sprawling Essex home
Some of
Palmer’s former Russian clients are believed to now live in luxury in
London and it is understood they feared he could reveal the secrets
behind their illicit wealth.
Palmer was facing trial in
Spain for fraud and police are investigating whether he was targeted by a
criminal associate or a former client to stop him striking a plea
bargain deal.
But a source told the Mirror that many in the criminal underworld believed that Palmer turned supergrass a dozen years ago.
There
were suspicions that he had struck a deal with the authorities in 2003
when an administrative “blunder” in a confiscation order allow him to
keep his £33m proceeds of crime.
He was sentenced to
eight years in jail for defrauding nearly 20,000 timeshare victims in
2001 and after his release Palmer retired to a remote mansion in South
Weald, Essex.
Notorious: John Palmer, pictured with his wife Marnie in Tenerife
A source told the Mirror: “There were a lot
of eyebrows raised when Palmer managed to keep hold of his millions.
Whether rightly or wrongly, a lot of people lost faith in him. There was
always this nagging suspicion that he had turned grass.
“He’s
a man who knows a lot of people’s secrets. I wouldn’t be surprised if
he had laundered a billion pounds during his career for people in many
different countries.
“But Russians were his main clients
and he travelled there many times at the height of his empire in the
1990s. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone from that community
tried to silence him. He wasn’t short of enemies.”
Another theory is that Palmer was killed because of connections to the Hatton Gardens heist which netted £10m earlier this year. Essex Police
has referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission
(IPCC) over delays in identifying Palmer’s death as a possible murder.
Police
initially recorded his death as not suspicious, believing it was the
result of complications following a recent heart operation.
But a post-mortem examination carried out on Tuesday determined the cause of death was gunshot wounds to the chest.
Crime: Palmer was a convicted fraudster
Palmer was cleared of handling proceeds
from the £26 million Brink’s-Mat bullion raid at Heathrow in 1983, but
his alleged involvement earned him the nickname “Goldfinger”.
He
had spent the last eight years on bail following his arrest in Tenerife
in 2007, where he was charged with fraud, firearm possession and money
laundering.
Palmer’s family said they were left devastated by his death and appealed for anyone with information to come forward to police.
A spokesman for the family said: “We are still in shock and trying to come to terms with the enormity of John’s death.
Probe: Detectives have launched murder investigation
“To lose someone you care about and who is a key part of your family so suddenly is traumatic and completely overwhelming.
“If anyone knows anything about John’s death which could help police please get in touch with them so we can find some answers.”
DCI
Simon Werrett, from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate, said:
“Any information people may have about any possible suspicious people
or vehicles in the area at that time may help us.”
Bronze horses, made for Adolf Hitler by Josef Thorak, on May 21 in Bad Duerkheim, Germany.Credit
Uwe Anspach/European Pressphoto Agency
BERLIN — The recent startling recovery of long-lost artworks made for Adolf Hitler and his chief architect, Albert Speer, began with a telephone call to a Berlin art dealer.
Two
large and imposing bronze horses by Josef Thorak — missing from a
Soviet military base outside Berlin since some point in communism’s
collapse — were available. Was the dealer, Traude Sauer, interested?
Ms.
Sauer, 76, who by her own estimation is a dealer of distinction, has
long been a police informant. Realizing that the Nazi-era sculptures
might be classified as stolen state property, she turned to René
Allonge, a chief investigator with the Berlin police.
That was in September 2013. Last month, those tips culminated in one of the more sensational police raids in recent memory in Germany.
The authorities descended on 10 properties nationwide, uncovering
dozens of missing pieces of Nazi art and throwing rare light on the
secretive market where such works are traded.
It
is legal to possess art commissioned by the Nazis, but it can remain in
private hands only if the state has no direct claim on it. That is
almost certainly not the case with several of the recovered works.
A bronze Wehrmacht statue, which may be the original by Arno Breker, a sculptor favored by Hitler.Credit
Roger-Viollet/Ullstein Bild
The discovery of the horses, and of several sculptures and reliefs created by another Hitler favorite, Arno Breker, stunned researchers who had long lamented their disappearance.
“Excited?
Of course,” said Christian Fuhrmeister, an expert on Nazi art at the
Central Institute for Art History in Munich. “Art history is a science
of objects. We really need the original work.” Especially, he added,
given the paucity of surviving artworks commissioned by Hitler and his
cronies. Art historians currently know much more about the art that
Hitler did not like, he noted, than about works that the Nazis favored.
The
path to the missing works involved a cast of characters that could have
come out of the board game Clue: the diminutive Ms. Sauer, a bag of art
books always at her side; a private detective in Amsterdam who traces
looted and stolen art; a fictitious Texan millionaire; a Belgian
middleman; and a group of aging Germans still so intrigued by Hitler
that at least one of them kept a Nazi-era tank on his rambling property,
together with a long-lost statue, or its copy, depicting a Wehrmacht
soldier as a hero.
The
horses, which adorned a courtyard in Hitler’s chancellery, were
apparently so precious to the Führer that they were evacuated by 1943,
when the first Allied bombs fell on Berlin.
The Nazis took Thorak’s steeds to the town of Wriezen, Germany,
and stored them there in Breker’s studio. In 1946, the Soviet forces
who occupied eastern Germany apparently took several Breker pieces — and
probably Thorak’s horses as well — to military barracks in nearby
Eberswalde. There they remained until Communist rule started to crumble
in East Germany.
Sometime
from mid-1988, when a group of West Berlin art historians took
photographs of them, to 1991, when the Soviets began their retreat from
East Germany, the horses disappeared.
Their discovery was a shock for Arthur Brand, the private detective based in Amsterdam.
“They came out of the sky,” he said. “Everybody thought they had been destroyed.”
Mr.
Brand entered the investigation in January 2014, when one of his Dutch
informants reported that he, like Ms. Sauer, had been offered the Thorak
horses, in his case by a Belgian middleman.
But
it was not until early this year that Mr. Brand and the Berlin police
detective, Mr. Allonge, joined forces. Accompanied by a journalist from
Der Spiegel, the pair sought to track down the sellers of the steeds.
By
that time, Mr. Brand had invented a Mr. Moss, a Texas oil millionaire
who was, he told the Belgian middleman, interested in the Nazi works. He
said he made up the character on the fly, borrowing heavily from the
persona of J. R. Ewing on the television show “Dallas.”
“In the end, I started to believe that Mr. Moss really existed,” he said by telephone from Amsterdam.
Mr.
Brand used the Moss character to lure the Belgian middleman to
meetings, where he wore a camera disguised as a button to record what he
hoped was the location of the horses and their owner.
When
the middleman kept stalling, Mr. Brand and Mr. Allonge turned to other
leads, including a tip from the redoubtable Ms. Sauer.
The
first would-be dealer to contact her regarding the horses — a onetime
car salesman named Johannes von Senkowski — had let slip that the
sculptures were in the possession of a Rainer Wolf, a businessman from
Bad Dürkheim, a town of about 19,000 in the bucolic Rhineland region of
western Germany.
And
it was there that the startled police found the giant bronzes — and
other works — on property apparently rented by Mr. Wolf. Based on some
of their other leads, the police raided nine other locations in four
other German states that same day, May 20. Together, about 30 artworks
were seized, said the Berlin state prosecutor Susann Wettley.
Asked
why nobody apparently noticed the giant sculptures — measuring more
than 11 feet tall — when they were transported or stored, Ms. Wettley
said that Mr. Wolf could have wrapped them in thick plastic and told
truckers that they were heavy blocks of sandstone.
“For
the normal citizen,” she said, “it is not clear that it is a Breker
statue, or horses, made for Adolf Hitler, for the Speer project” to
create a glorious new capital for the Nazis’ Thousand Year Reich.
Ms.
Sauer said it was evident that the works had been stolen. “The Russians
just left them standing,” she said. “And overnight, they disappeared.
Excuse me, but you can’t just stick them in your pocket!”
Mr. Allonge, the lead Berlin investigator, has declined to comment because the investigation is continuing.
The
raids led investigators to eight German men, ages 61 to 79, Ms. Wettley
said. None have been charged yet. Besides Mr. Wolf, who is over 70,
attention has fallen on Klaus-Dieter Flick, 78, who keeps his sizable
collection of Nazi paraphernalia, including a tank and possibly various
historical guns, in an underground storeroom on his large property near
the northern German city of Kiel.
Mr.
Brand, the Dutch detective, said he believed that the collection
included the Wehrmacht statue by Breker and claimed to have spotted it
when looking at satellite pictures of Mr. Flick’s property.
Mr.
Flick said the statue was a copy. In a telephone interview, he affirmed
that he had been collecting artifacts from for almost 60 years.
“For me, art is independent of a political dimension,” he said.
In
a strange twist, Mr. Flick said Thorak’s horses had resided on his
property for two years in the 1990s, when they served as collateral, he
said, for a 300,000 German mark loan he had made to Mr. Wolf. That would
add two more long journeys for the horses.
Mr.
Wolf has declined to talk to reporters, but he released a statement
through his lawyer two days after the raid. “The art objects were
lawfully acquired more than 25 years ago from the Russian Army and the
earlier producers,” it said, referring presumably to workers in Thorak’s
studio.
Mr.
Flick had a more colorful account, claiming that Mr. Wolf had told him
that either Russian soldiers or the East Germans — Mr. Flick cannot
remember which — had cut up the bronzes and effectively sold the works
as scrap metal to Mr. Wolf, who had them reassembled.
Experts are debating why the works came to light now.
“Perhaps
someone thought so much time has passed, these statues won’t be
recognized,” said Ralph Paschke, one of the West Berlin experts who saw
the horses and other works at the Soviet base in Eberswalde in 1988.
Mr. Brand suggested that repugnance for the Nazis, as well as the Soviets, lay behind the attempt to sell.
The owners’ heirs “threaten to destroy the works with dynamite,” Mr. Brand said. “They do not want anything to do with them.”
Until
recently, most of the art world believed The Art Loss Register (ALR) had a
reliable and thorough database that listed lost and stolen art works, antiques,
and collectibles, but that no longer is the case.
According to London’s Sunday Times, The New York Times and other sources, the
London-based ALR has made major errors handing out certificates that gave
stolen artworks clear provenance status.
The ALR works with auction houses, museums, fairs, collectors, estates, and law
enforcement agencies providing certificates that state works have clear title
and are free from claim. Because they did little to no research on certain
pieces, they allegedly gave certificates for stolen art.
How could that happen? The Times reports that the ALR admits the more a client
pays in fees, the more thorough its research. Often working as a bounty hunter,
the ALR charges up to 20 percent of a
painting’s worth to disclose its whereabouts.
Any claim
that a provenance or history is clear from liens or encumbrances for a famous
artwork (or one that is hundreds of years old) needs to be accompanied by an
enormous amount of sale slips, exhibition records, court documents, expert
opinions, conservation reports and more. If it’s a significant work of art,
many databases should be scrutinized, especially those tracing Nazi loot.
No one can protect themselves against lawsuits or confiscations of art, if the
professionals they trust are not accurate and meticulous with their
assessments.
Art Net News reported in its article “The Art Loss Register is Entangled in
3 Major Art Disputes” the ALR admits it often took as truth
whatever some clients told them about provenance and did not challenge their
data. That’s a naïve, irresponsible approach to doing research! James
Ratcliffe, ALR's general counsel and director of recoveries, confessed
provenances given by clients are “taken in trust.” Really? What if the client
is a thief?
Certified appraisers who abide by ethical standards do not take as fact data a
client provides nor do they form final judgments from the client’s information
without completing further research. They are expected to do due diligence,
conduct proper research of all databases and other entities (such as museum and
auction files) to form reliable, trustworthy conclusions that establish
credible provenances and histories.
The ALR should have proven statements clients made were accurate before it
handed out bogus certificates. When millions of dollars are at stake, research
should be painstakingly thorough. The ALR has taken the stand: If an item isn’t
already in its database of stolen or missing works, it has clear title. That
assumption is negligent and immature.
London’s
Sunday Times reported in August
2014 that ALR founder Julian Radcliffe admitted his firm paid thieves to
recover stolen art in a dozen cases and is described as a “fence” by senior
European law enforcement officials. By this admission, the ALR gave clearing
certificates to many looters and thieves.
World Press reported in August 2013, in an article titled “Chasing Aphrodite,”
that Christie’s sold ALR-cleared antiquities that were fenced by well-known
loot dealers Giacomo Medici, Robin Symes, and Gianfranco Becchina, most of
which were cleared by the ALR.
Much of the art world pretends to vet ancient art, trying to prove it was not
illegally excavated, but many museums and collectors worldwide accept
questionable paperwork so that they can purchase what they know is stolen,
hoping not to get caught.
World Press claims most ALR certificates merely state “at the date that the
search was made the item had not been registered as stolen,” but that doesn’t
mean an item is not stolen. Many dealers and curators now realize that an ALR
certificate is shabby, at best, and it does not protect anyone.
The National Gallery of Australia paid $5,000,000 for a stolen ancient Shiva
bronze after receiving an ALR search certificate from now-incarcerated
antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, who provided no provenance on the piece.
The museum should have realized that any antiquity without a provenance is a
warning signal that it could be stolen. Looters and thieves count on that kind
of irrational, emotional behavior.
Even worse, the ALR admits it rarely asked dealers for provenance information,
which shows how shabby the firm’s research is.
Patricia Jobe Pierce is a freelance writer, art historian, art
dealer-consultant, certified AAA appraiser, public speaker, photographer and
American art authenticator for museums, auction houses and collectors. She
graduated from Boston University with a BFA in 1965, is owner and director of
Pierce Galleries, Inc. in Nantucket and Hingham, Mass., and is author of many
works, including "Art Collecting & Investing: The Inner Workings and
the Underbelly of the Art World." For more of her submissions, Click Here Now.
Ex-business partners hunting ability of art dealer Michel van Rijn
Two former business partners of art collector Michel van Rijn hunt down
a portion of the assets of the eccentric art connoisseur. The duo
claimed that Van Rijn them - and several others - for 'definitely a ton
"is highlighted.
Former assistant Arthur Fire and international recruiter Ard van Beek
have to prove that the art dealer recent months in the Italian Livorno
made a handful of people cheat money. Ard van Beek claiming themselves
to be duped and seeks to unify the group of victims now. There are
Dutch people who reclaim money. Van Beek bought himself at the
insistence of Van Rijn painting of € 20,000, but the picture turned out
to be worth nothing at closer inspection. After much nagging, received
the HR boss € 5,000 back. "But that is not enough. Van Rijn has to pay
back everything. This is a matter of principle. He made abuse of our
friendship. That painting I bought to serve him. " This week
came the amateur sleuth in his own words on more sinister deals of the
art dealer. Van Beek studied the practices of Van Rijn in the Italian
port of Livorno where the art dealer spent the last months. He
found the spot that Filipino assistant to Van Rijn has been given two
months not been paid and that a Chinese man, who art dealer provided
include food, € 20,000 lent to Van Rijn and money in all probability
lost. There is also the story of the Amsterdam art courier Jonas' Pablo "Paul still € 3,500 claims at Van Rijn. Jonas Paul vouched for the relocation of Van Rijn to Livorno.
"This man must be stopped, because he is incorrigible. He takes you in,
get dressed and when you are no longer of value, it throws your way. A
devil is! "Says Van Beek to Quote." I'm glad Arthur Fire assist me. " Brand: "There are a lot more people." Van Beek Van Rijn learned a few years ago when they know together in a luxury rehab clinic
in Barcelona were interned. On the intercession of the art dealer who
Interpol and Mossad helped stolen art to detect, Van Beek bought a plot
and paid € 20,000 to Van Rijn. That money, he would recover. The
painting gold as collateral. "All bullshit talks were. That painting
he had just bought something on the market. It was not worth more than a
few hundred dollars! " Then it goes wrong between the two
withdrawal friends. After Van Beek, who had to transfer the money to the
account of one of the college sons, again demanded his money, follow
threats he tells Quote. "If you do not cooperate, you get visit
of tough guys, was the threat" he says. "And I'm really not the only one
this has happened." Iran also Untalan, Filipino assistant to
Van Rijn, is insulted and even accused of theft when he asks about his
overdue salary. In an email to son Floris van Rijn Untalan ask
themselves where he earned this dastardly treatment. "Why your dad is
doing this to me? One of my friend call me on phone That your dad
making That story That I steal money from him? I help your dad with all
sacrifice ... I do the best I can to borrow money from Filipinos here to
medicine and vodka bought his cigarettes. He even think my situation,
he do not pay my 2 months salary. " Van Beek: "It's really
terrible. That Filipino boy worked for € 500 per month, but even that
was not paid. When he complained Van Rijn threatened to give him as
illegal by the police, "says Van Beek. In an email conversation
that goes on this issue at son Floris van Rijn apologizes for the
behavior of his father, but a solution is not offered. "I know my father hasnt leg the best with you lately."
Art Courier Paul Jonas has the same unpleasant experiences. Quote to
let the art transporter Van Rijn that he has moved to Italy and the
contents of his son to Leiden transported. Jonas also paid a hotel stay
for Van Rijn in the Netherlands who was sick. In total he yielded €
5,500 for services, he calculates, but he got paid nothing. As a result
of money problems, he had to temporarily suspend its business. "Can
you please tel me the wrong That I did for you. To ruin me like this.
coming wednesday theywill come Come To close my business Because I am
there months behind "the art courier writes in an urgent e-mail to
Van Rijn. After several desperate mails will be paid € 1,000 in the end
through an account of one of his sons. "What can I do?" The art courier
asks in despair to Quote. Van Beek, who has a good job at the
Swiss technology giant ABB, rest only until the money is returned. "This
is a matter of principle for me. It takes a lot of time, but I sure
about, "he says. Van Rijn is currently in Netherlands Quote
spoke to him in recent days, by e-mail -. He has no phone - and once on
a terrace at the Amsterdam Marie Heineken in front of his son Floris.
Van Rijn believes that a smear campaign against him is conducted by his
former aide Arthur Fire is aware of the issues and Van Beek information
whispers. The quarrel between Brand and Van Rijn has a long
history and is the result of a corporate divorce battle, about six years
ago. They seemed such a nice couple. Van Rijn and Fire grew to Sherlock
Holmes and John Watson tackled art swindlers. Meanwhile, they each
vowed archenemies where all dirt to anyone who will listen is peddled, to private-mails to it. Van Rijn believes that his former assistant butter on his head. "
Van Rijn claims that Brand himself also acted in false works. "Arthur
Fire has offered a distorted picture in Berlin at the museum and now
plays the nice gentleman." It would also be a former assistant to the internationally wanted art swindler Leonardo Patterson
betrayed by declaring in front of the German justice a collection of
stolen art treasures of a South American Indian tribe. Brand is held one
of the witnesses against the Costa Rican in a process in Munich. Van
Rijn: "He worked seven months for Patterson to help him refute all the nonsense stories about him. Then he switched to justice. " Fire
ignites in anger when confronted with this reading. "I wrong? Man! Van
Rijn by Patterson bribed to tell his side of the story. Did he received
for € 70,000. I never received a penny. " The art sleuth want nothing
more to do with his former boss. Also, he was visited by goons when he
refused the false piece of the Berlin museum Van Rijn give back.
"It did not seem so convenient me. When Van Rijn has a famous Amsterdam
criminal graduated me to recall that counterfeit image that he let me
offer nota bene myself and where I later found out it was false. The man
was then given the command to save me apart. Fortunately that
did not happen, because I could explain it. " (This famous Mokumse tough
guy will not comment on the incident, but confirmed that Van Rijn
approached him for a incassoklussie). Brand, the former protégé,
wants Van Rijn trapped. "This time I let but not to sit there. He now
goes straight into the bin. Someone this piece of garbage should just
stop once and I'm willing to do that. I spent years Michel psychological
support and have always been there for his children, but obviously
looking gentleman fighting again and this time it's my turn. "
Famous Stolen Painting Sent Detroit Mob Power Horseface Pete To Twilight Prison Term
Deceased Detroit mob underboss Peter (Horseface Pete) Licavoli did a
year in prison for trying to move a historically-significant piece of
artwork on the black market in the years before his death in the early
1980s – it was his fourth and final trip to the clink. Licavoli, a titan
in underworld circles around the country dating back to the Prohibition
Era, was indicted in 1976 in Arizona federal court and eventually
convicted at trial in 1978 of receiving and the attempted sale of stolen
property, tied to charges of attempting to sell the world-famous
“Lucretia,” a 500-year old painting, to an undercover FBI agent. The
Lucretia was painted by Rembrandt in the 16th century and recently sold
at an auction for five million dollars.
The
then-75 year old Licavoli earned a reputation as a killer and a huge
money maker during the 1920s as founder and leader of the River Gang
bootlegging syndicate in Detroit – his arrest record boasted nearly 40
collars. When the Motor City’s various bootlegging factions came under
one umbrella with the creation of La Cosa Nostra (the American mafia) in
1931, Horseface Pete was tapped a capo and given a large series of
in-state and out-of-state rackets to run on behalf of Michigan mob
administrators. By the 1940s, he had relocated to Arizona, watching over
his rackets in the Midwest via his main lieutenants in Detroit,
specifically men like Joseph (Scarface Joe) Bommarito, Joseph (Joe
Misery) Moceri, Matthew (Mike the Enforcer) Rubino and Max (Big Maxie)
Stern. Licavoli was promoted from capo to the organization’s underboss
role in 1969.
“Pete Licavoli lived out of town, however he was still able to keep
his presence felt in Detroit through a series of intermediaries, guys we
knew very well and were almost equally as juiced-in as he was,” retired
FBI agent Oscar Westerfield recalled. “They spoke for him and that
voice spoke loud, even if he was out in the Arizona desert. He could
touch anyone he wanted from thousands of miles away and people back in
Michigan were still ungodly scared of him.”
Westerfield was the head of the FBI OC Division in Detroit during
parts of the 1970s and 80s, finishing his mob-busting exploits as head
of Tampa’s OC Division into the 1990s.
“Licavoli had as much respect and say as most bosses in the U.S. at
his height,” Westerfield said. “He wasn’t a don, he might as well have
been though with the reverence he was afforded in Detroit circles and
well beyond.”
Scarface Joe Bommarito was the crime family’s first street boss until
he was forced into retirement due to sickness in 1960 (he died in
Florida from MS in 1965). He and Licavoli grew up together in St. Louis
prior to surfacing as a tandem of terrors on the streets of Detroit and
making their initial fortune in smuggling and selling illegal booze. Joe
Misery, a Licavoli first cousin, numbers whiz and River Gang
co-founder, ran his own crew, but frequently shuffled messages back and
forth between the powers that be in Michigan and Horseface Pete in
Tucson (he was killed in 1968).
Mike Rubino was Licavoli’s bodyguard as a young River Ganger and
served as acting capo of his Detroit crew – upon his death in 1971 of
natural causes, Joseph (Joe the Whip) Triglia took over those duties,
being aided by Horseface Pete’s baby brother Dominick. Big Maxie Stern
was another protégé of Licavoli’s and the syndicate’s overseer of all
Jewish gambling rackets until he died of a heart attack in the early
1970s.
Arriving in Arizona on a permanent basis in around 1944, Horseface
Pete built the picturesque, opulent and state-of-the-art, 75-acre Grace
Ranch, an estate in Tucson that housed his residence as well as several
other buildings, such as an art gallery, bowling alley, nine-hole golf
course, airplane and helicopter landing strips and quite appropriately a
shooting range. Grace Ranch was named after Licavoli’s wife, Grace, the
sister of Joseph (Long Joe) Bommarito, another Detroit gangland figure
who came out west himself to be in charge of the crime family’s
interests in Las Vegas.
It was activity occurring on the Grace Ranch property in the
1970s that Licavoli’s last arrest sprouted from and landed him back
behind bars (his prior stints were for bribery, contempt and tax
evasion). Informants were telling the FBI that Horseface Pete was using
his art gallery as a waystation for fenced merchandise, such as jewelry
and precious stones, resulting in the feds bugging the telephone line in
his gallery office headquarters as well as his desk and sending an
undercover FBI agent in to set up a sting. It didn’t take long. Within a
month, Special Agent Don Mason was meeting face-to-face with the
imposing member of Midwest mob royalty in the cozy confines of his plush
office.
In the midst of negotiating the purchase of a shipment of “hot”
diamonds, Licavoli offered Mason a chance to buy the Lucretia, an
extremely rare piece of artwork boosted from a Cincinnati,Ohio mansion
the year previous (conversations picked up by the government-planted
bug).Taking Mason, masquerading as a rich classic art collector, on a
tour of the breathtakingly-beautiful gallery, set in the shadows of the
Sierra Mountains, Horseface Pete showed him the Lucretia hanging in a
frame in the foyer and newspaper clippings vouching for the Rembrandt’s
authenticity.
Licavoli’s had deep blood and criminal ties in the Buckeye State –
his younger brother, Thomas (Yonnie) Licavoli, first cousins, James
(Jack White) Licavoli and Calogero (Leo Lips) Moceri and his
brother-in-law Frank (Frankie C) Cammeratta operated with impunity in
various patches of the Ohio underworld in their respective mob heydays
that spanned the 1920s into the 1980s. Jack White and Leo Lips assumed
leadership of the Cleveland mafia in the mid-1970s, promptly entering
into a war with the city’s Irish mob group.
At almost the exact time Jack White and Leo Lips took power in
Cleveland, government-mole Mason was providing Licavoli a $1,000 down
payment for the Lucretia and was subsequently indicted and incarcerated
for 13 months of an original 18-month sentence.
“We knew he was conducting rackets out in Arizona and in Michigan, he
was booking bets, giving out loans and investing in all kinds of land
and oil deals, all while chumming around with Joe Bonanno, the New York
Godfather that had fled west in the 60s, amongst other hoods in the
region,” commented Westerfield.
Horseface Pete (81) walked free in 1981 and died of heart
failure three years later. After he was arrested and his ranch raided in
the spring of 1976, the Rembrandt Lucretia was immediately seized off
the wall at the art gallery and returned to its rightful owner, Charna
Signer.
Tome Raiders: Rare Items Stolen From Libraries
Thieves are targeting historic collections of rare books, manuscripts and maps held at public libraries around the world.
By Richard Suchet, Sky News Reporter
Rare and valuable items held by libraries around the world are being "raided" by thieves, according to experts.
The theft of historically important books, manuscripts and
maps has become such a serious problem that international experts are
gathering in London to discuss how to tackle it.
A conference at The British Library, called The Written
Heritage of Mankind in Peril, aims to produce a set of principles that
will "help prevent widespread theft and trafficking and restore stolen
items to their rightful owners for the benefit of everyone".
Art Recovery International, which keeps a database of
missing cultural objects, says more than 2,000 rare items have been
reported missing or stolen since the beginning of March.
The company's chief executive Christopher Marinello said:
"We have seen thieves use small cutting tools - little knives disguised
in pencils or pens.
1/5
Gallery: Tome Raiders: Rare Items Stolen From Libraries
Gallery: Tome Raiders: Rare Items Stolen From Libraries
"We have even seen them use wet string to remove a rare map
or page from a book and then they will try to sell it on the open market
place.
"Thieves have seen the phenomenal prices that rare books,
manuscripts and maps have achieved at auction and are now raiding our
libraries of some very important cultural heritage.
"Thieves are looking to cash out as quickly as possible and they are looking at libraries as a weak point.
"We hear about the fantastic art thefts that are taking
place in museums - they often make the news - but very few people know
about what is going on in our public libraries and that is why this
conference is so important."
The conference is the first of its kind and will be attended
by dealers, auction houses, law enforcement officials, security
experts, lawyers, collectors, national collections and others.
Tens of thousands of historic books and manuscripts are thought to be missing or damaged.
"These are not things that can be replicated," says Jonathan Eyal from the Royal United Services Institute.
The Defence and Security Forum has had rare military and regimental books stolen from its own library.
"The particular damage from any pilfering is very specific," Mr Eyal said.
"These are very specialised collections of books, which take
centuries to assemble and five minutes to destroy. The significance of
such a loss is incalculable.
"One of the key problems for libraries is less that of
security - most special collections are quite good at the physical
security - it's more a question of betrayal of trust by employees."
One solution could be to digitise the rarest and most
valuable books so they would be both accessible and secure, but
opponents of the idea say it detracts from the principle of libraries
being a public resource.
Speakers at The British Library conference will include
Jerker Ryden, legal adviser to the Swedish library, which was at the
centre of one of the world's most famous thefts.
Senior librarian Anders Burius stole at least 56 books in
the 1990s. He later committed suicide following his confession and
arrest in 2004.
It is also thought there are thousands of items belonging to The British Library that are missing, lost or have been stolen.
EXCLUSIVE: “I’m the real Banksy,” claims British artist hiding out in Spain
British artist claims ‘wealthy and powerful members of Britain’s art circle’ stole Banksy from him
Michael Shurman. Photo copyright the Olive Press“I’M the real Banksy,” says British artist Michael Shurman, straight-faced with a sense of enormous relief.
Just four words into the interview and I’m hooked.
Lured on the promise of ‘the biggest art story in half a century’ I
headed into the Guadalhorce Valley for what would turn out to be one of
the most surreal afternoons of my life.
Miles away from anywhere, I met mysterious Brit Michael Shurman at his secluded hideout in the mountains.
“Or should I say, I created Banksy and then it was stolen from me,” he adds.
“There is no Banksy, there never was.”
The 52-year-old artist, originally from London, claims he created the ‘Banksy’ persona in 2004.
He purports that Banksy was stolen from him and then continued by ‘wealthy and powerful members of Britain’s art circle’.
Portrait of Picasso. Photo copyright the Olive Press
As a result, Shurman says that he has been ‘ousted’ by the British art scene and was forced to flee to Spain.
“There are some very powerful people behind this,” he adds. “Everyone
from art dealers to national newspaper editors are in on it.
“People know I am the creator of Banksy, I have had over 120 works of
art stolen over the last 10 years as everyone waits for the lid to be
blown on this.
He adds: “I was banned from art galleries in the UK, commissions were
mysteriously cancelled and I was not allowed to compete in national art
competitions.
“They are scared of me and wanted me to slip away, but I’ve bit my tongue for long enough.
“This time next year people will be talking about Shurman, not Banksy. I’m going to pull the pants down on the whole scam.”
Shurman claims to have invented the Banksy idea while he was living in Glastonbury.
He claims that he first painted the image of alien heads in Bristol
and Glastonbury in 2004, an image which has become synonymous with
Banksy.
Shurman with latest piece. Photo copyright the Olive Press
“Banksy was my creation,” he adds. “Although at the time it wasn’t called Banksy, it was just something I was doing.
“It’s only when it got taken over that the ‘Banksy’ myth was attributed to it.”
Shurman, who moved to Spain in November 2014, said he has finally had enough and is ready to ‘expose those behind the con’.
Although he says he is not scared of the Banksy operators he says he
intentionally chose his low-key, off the beaten track home in
Andalucia’s mountains so he ‘could not be easily found’.
He is now in the process of selecting a lawyer in Spain to help him claim for damages against the people behind Banksy.
Photo: DPA
Nazi-stolen painting fetches €2.7m at auction
On Wednesday the painting 'Two Riders on a Beach', looted by the
Nazis in 1938, was sold at a London auction house for €2.7m shortly
after being returned to the rightful owner.
Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on a Beach"
is the first piece of artwork to be auctioned off from a collection
found in a 2012 police raid on the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of one of Adolf Hitler's favourite art dealers.
The painting sold for nearly €2.7 million, over three times the price
of €766,000 it was expected to fetch at Sotheby’s auction house in
London.
The artwork was returned to the heir by Taskforce Schwabinger Kunstfund, or the Schwabinger Art Fund Task Force, in May.
The rightful heir, a New York lawyer, had even attempted to sue the Federal Republic of Germany and the state Bavaria in Washington for the art theft by the Nazis.
Before being recovered, the 1901 oil painting was inherited by
Cornelius, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, an art dealer employed by
Hitler, who died last year.
Legal wrangles erupted over the collection after Gurlitt's death, as he
tried to leave the trove - including many works confiscated from Jewish
families and other people targeted by the Nazis - in its entirety to
the Museum of Fine Art in Bern, Switzerland.
Another heir of the painting, David Toren, now aged 90 and blind,
witnessed the painting being stolen from his great-uncle David Friedmann
in 1938, the day after the massive Kristallnacht (night of broken
glass) action against Jewish-owned businesses, when he was 13.
Spanish police return art stolen from Swedish churches
Spanish police on Monday returned 12 artworks, including
several 15th-century wood engravings, to Sweden's embassy in Madrid
after they were allegedly stolen by a Spaniard from Swedish churches and
museums. Police seized the items -- a wooden chest and 11 wooden
engravings -- last month on Spain's Canary Islands at the home of a
63-year-old man who they suspect stole the items in Sweden, police said
in a statement.
The Chinese Want Their Art Back
Photo
Credit
Jun Cen
OVER
the course of five days in March, Christie’s auctioned off the holdings
of the dealer Robert H. Ellsworth, who, before his death last year at
age 85, filled his 22-room apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan with
what was said to be one of the world’s most comprehensive private
collections of Asian art, earning him the nickname “King of Ming.” The
sale fetched $134 million, nearly four times the presale estimate of $35
million.
Chinese
art has become a prized liquid asset for superrich collectors, who,
instead of putting their treasures on display, often deposit them in
carefully guarded, climate-controlled warehouses. But the media’s
emphasis on the white-hot market for contemporary Chinese works
overlooks a more interesting story: the effort by the Chinese
government, state-run companies, private collectors and even, quite
probably, some criminal networks to bring Chinese antiquities back home.
One
impetus for this effort is the Communist Party’s embrace of traditional
culture as “a foundation for China to compete in the world,” as
President Xi Jinping said in October. Having for decades viewed
antiquities as relics of feudal oppression and bourgeois decadence, the
party now says art can “lead people to live a life abiding by the code
of morality,” in that way contributing to social stability. This is a
turnabout from the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when museums were
ransacked, and countless antiquities destroyed. Old art is again
prestigious; new buyers seek canonical work for the social status, not
just potential profit, it confers.
The
party has taken its new stance on culture at a time of rising
nationalism. China openly promotes efforts to repatriate works pillaged
during its self-defined “century of humiliation,” from the Opium Wars of
the 1840s and 1850s to the establishment of the People’s Republic in
1949.
Perhaps
the most notorious affront in that period was the sacking of the
magnificent Old Summer Palace by British and French troops encircling
Beijing in 1860, at the end of the Second Opium War. The invaders
torched or leveled as many as 200 buildings, stripping the nearly
thousand-acre site of sculptures, silk robes, jewelry and even Pekingese
dogs, then unknown in Europe. (Queen Victoria was presented with a
puppy, named “Looty.”)
The
destruction was ordered by one James Bruce, the eighth Earl of Elgin —
whose father had, some 60 years earlier, ordered the removal of the
friezes from the Parthenon in Athens. For decades, Greece has vainly
demanded that Britain return the Elgin marbles (which are on permanent
display at the British Museum), even going so far as to construct a
museum that would house them.
China
has taken a different approach: Instead of pressing formal demands for
repatriation, it lets money do the talking. Through a corporate offshoot
of the People’s Liberation Army, the China Poly Group, the government
has turned the auction block into a patriotic battlefield.
Take,
for example, 12 animal heads wrenched from a zodiac fountain that once
glistened below the European-style Hall of Calm Seas at the palace. In
2000, auctions held in Hong Kong by Sotheby’s and Christie’s featured
three of the heads. China’s Bureau of Cultural Relics urged the auction
houses to withdraw the bronzes, citing a Unesco convention.
When
both companies declined and the auctions went ahead, the winning bids
were cast by the Poly Group. They went on view at the Poly Art Museum in
Beijing, which subsequently secured three more zodiac heads. One of the
three was donated by a Macao gambling tycoon; the other two were bid on
at a 2009 Christie’s sale in Paris by a Chinese buyer who then refused
to pay for them. In 2013, François-Henri Pinault, whose company owns the
auction house, gave them to China as a good-will gesture.
Of
course, many art works never come up for auction. Perhaps the greatest
enigma in Chinese art today is a little-reported crime wave in Europe
that, since 2010, has targeted antiquities that were looted from the Old
Summer Palace or from Beijing’s Forbidden City in the early 20th
century.
The
string of thefts is believed to have started in August 2010 with a
break-in at the Chinese Pavilion on the grounds of Drottningholm Palace,
the royal residence near Stockholm. Five months later, burglars in
Bergen, Norway, made off with 56 items from the China Collection of the
KODE Art Museums, mostly antiquities gathered by Johan Wilhelm Normann
Munthe, a military adventurer who served in the Boxer Rebellion.
In
April 2012, intruders broke into the Malcolm MacDonald Gallery at the
Oriental Museum at Durham University in England, filching a porcelain
sculpture and jade bowl together valued at about $3 million. That same
month, thieves made their way into the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge
University, making off with 18 “culturally significant” objects, notably
Chinese jades.
In
January 2013, some 25 Chinese artworks were stolen in a second theft at
the museum in Norway. The museum closed its China Collection to
visitors and, in an arrangement brokered by a Chinese entrepreneur,
seven of 21 marble plinths taken from the Old Summer Palace were
promised to Peking University.
Finally,
only three months ago, burglars pilfered 15 gold, bronze and porcelain
masterworks in the Château de Fontainebleau, the former royal retreat
south of Paris. In a seven-minute sweep, they outwitted alarms and
cameras as they smashed display cases within the palace’s Chinese
Museum, founded in 1863 by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. “They
knew very well what they were after,” said the chateau’s president,
Jean-François Hebert.
Why
steal documented works that can neither be legally sold nor openly
exhibited? “Chinese laws, on everything from theft to intellectual
property, are very different from those in the West, and therefore
stolen or forged artworks find a market far more easily there than
abroad,” Noah Charney, an art crime expert, said after the Norway
thefts. “A certain type of Chinese collector would be far less shy about
purchasing a knowingly stolen artwork than a Western collector would.
Chinese collectors could purchase stolen Chinese art and still have the
pride of display, perhaps with the rationale that, whether or not the
object was stolen, it should be in China, and therefore the collector
was somehow aiding its liberation.”
As
Paul Harris, a leading British dealer of Chinese art, wrote in a blog
post in March: “The general feeling in intelligence circles is that this
was ‘an ordered job’ carried out by local French professional criminals
acting as agents for a third party. That third party is almost
certainly abroad, well away from French jurisdiction and, according to
one intelligence expert, ‘The smart money is on the artifacts being on
the way to the People’s Republic of China.’ ”
Granted, speculation is not evidence.
But
in a revealing footnote to the Fontainebleau heist, France is involved
in backstage discussions regarding the return of 30-odd gold pieces
illegally unearthed more than two decades ago in China’s Gansu Province.
They were donated to the Musée Guimet, an Asian art museum in Paris, by
the art dealer Christian Deydier and by Mr. Pinault’s father, François
Pinault, whose fashion houses include Gucci and Saint Laurent (with a
large footprint in the Chinese market). But now the plan to return the
antiquities has been caught in a legal maze, since gifts to French
museums are in theory irrevocable.
So
far there is nothing to demonstrate that Beijing has anything to do
with the thefts. What’s clear, though, is that the West and China need a
more open conversation about art and where it belongs. Unesco has
estimated that 1.67 million Chinese relics are held by 200-plus museums
in 47 countries. Many Chinese want much of it back. Whether and how that
goal is realized will be one of the art world’s big stories for years
to come.
Criminal Assets Bureau target homes in Rathkeale
CAB targeted homes in Rathkeale
Officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau
have raided a number of properties in Rathkeale in the past week as part
of an ongoing operation.
Several houses in the town are understood to have been targeted in the swoop which took place last Thursday.
A garda spokesman this week confirmed that the raids had taken place but did not reveal the reasons.
“The Criminal Assets Bureau conducted a number of searches in County Limerick on Thursday 11th June 2015,” he said.
“The
planned searches were one element of an investigation which is being
conducted by the Bureau. For operational reasons no further information
is available.”
CAB has previously targeted homes and businesses in
the town as part of its investigation into a notorious Traveller gang
often referred to as the Rathkeale Rovers.
This gang, based
around a small number of close-knit families, is thought to be
responsible for much of the illegal rhino horn trade in Europe. However,
it is believed to be involved in a wide range of criminal activities
throughout Europe as well as North and South America, Asia and
Australia.
In September 2013, five home and an office in
Rathkeale, Limerick city and Newmarket, Co Cork were raided by officers
from the bureau who removed documents and a various items from the
properties.
It is not known if last week’s raids were related to this ongoing operation.
Victim finds stolen silver on eBay
Dozens
of pieces of antique silverware have been found by Gloucestershire
Police, after a burglary victim noticed some of her missing items on
eBay.
The house in Woodmancote was searched after items stolen in the Cotswolds in May were discovered on sale on eBay.
The
force has published photographs of other silver items found at the
house, which they suspect are stolen, in the hope of tracing the
rightful owners.
A man has been arrested and released on bail while inquiries continue.
The burglary victim's daughter noticed some of the missing items while browsing the online auction site.
Other
antique items discovered include engraved spoons, trinket boxes,
tankards, fob watches, perfume bottles and hairbrushes. They can be seen
on the force's Pinterest page and its own website.
Former Norwich officer arrested on antique store theft allegation
STONINGTON, Conn. (AP/WTNH) — Police have arrested two suspects,
including a fired Norwich police officer, on accusations they smashed a
plate glass window at a Stonington antique shop and stole jewelry.
The Day of New London
reports that police charged the former officer, Jamie D. Longolucco of
Westerly, R.I. and Meredith Soulia of Groton with criminal mischief,
larceny, and burglary. They were released on bond and are scheduled to
appear June 29 in New London Superior Court.
The 41-year-old Longolucco, who was also charged with driving with a
suspended license, was fired by Norwich police in 2007 after three
arrests and a conviction on third-degree assault and breach of peace
stemming from an off-duty fight with two women.
Carolyn Yost, owner of Yost Estate Jewelry & Stonington Antiques, now has to replace the six- by ten-foot window.
“It’s quarter-inch plate glass,” she said. “It’s been in the building
probably 100 years, so it’s going to cost a lot to replace and it’s an
annoyance.”
A surveillance picture shows one of the burglars in front of the
Stonington Borough store, which was broken into at around 2 a.m. Monday.
Witnesses gave police a description of the car, which was stopped a
short time later. Police say Longolucco was behind the wheel.
“It’s really terrible that somebody that was once trusted to protect
you has gone bad, but evidently maybe he was bad in the first place and
shouldn’t have been a police officer,” said Yost.
Police are also investigating whether or not the pair may have been
involved in a smash and grab at the nearby Water Street Barber Shop last
December. A man and woman were seen stealing two remote control boats
from that shop after breaking the front window.
What Happens to Stolen Art After a Heist?
The most high-profile art heists almost always end in disaster. But what about the bulk of art crimes you don't hear about?
An empty frame in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where 13 paintings were stolen in 1990.
Photographer: David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Last
month, administrators at the Boston Public Library discovered that a
$600,000 engraving by Dürer and a $30,000 etching by Rembrandt had gone
missing. It set off a media firestorm, the director of the museum
resigned, and then … a few weeks after the works went missing, they were
found, misfiled, 80 feet away from where they were supposed to be.
The
works’ disappearance and the subsequent panic underscored how helpless
law enforcement can be when art—an easily transportable, largely
untraceable commodity—is stolen. But not every artwork is created equal,
and neither are heists. The quality of the art, it turns out,
profoundly affects how the art is pursued, which makes intuitive sense:
The greater the masterpiece, the greater the uproar over its
disappearance. Only one thing stays consistent: Once art is stolen,
there’s an abysmally small chance of getting it back.
Major Heists
Most people are familiar with the big ones. There’s the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist,
in which 13 works were taken and which has gone unsolved for 25 years;
there’s the 2010 robbery of Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Matisse, and
Leger paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, where one of the
suspects—as reported by Le Journal du Dimanche—apparently
panicked, destroyed the art, and then put the remnants in the trash
(though according to the article, lawyers for the suspect refused to
confirm this theory); and there was the 2012 Rotterdam Kunsthal heist,
where yet more modern work by Gaugin, Matisse, Monet, Freud, and Picasso
were stolen. The art was reportedly stored in Romania with one of the
suspects’ mothers, who claims to have incinerated the paintings in her kitchen stove.
A painting by Édouard Manet that was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Édouard Manet, Chez Tortoni, ca. 1879-1880
What
do these heists have in common? Start with the price tag—today, the
paintings from the Gardiner Museum would be worth an estimated $300 million; the Paris Museum of Modern Art paintings were valued close to €500 million ($561 million), according to the Guardian; and the Rotterdam museum's works were (conservatively) estimated at more than €50 million.
Not coincidentally, each theft generated an intense amount of
publicity. (“Musee d'Art Moderne art theft” generates around 2.5 million
search results on Google.) That kind of scrutiny, says Bonnie
Magness-Gardiner, the art theft program
manager for the FBI, makes it “very hard to sell stolen work.” Plus,
the more prominent the artwork, the less likely a thief is to sell it.
“There are no buyers for masterworks,” says Anthony Amore, director of
security at the Gardner Museum and the author of such books as The Art of the Con and Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists.
“People talk about paintings selling for 10 percent of their value on
the black market,” he says. “But masterpieces are still too expensive
even at 10 percent—no one’s going to spend millions for a work they can
never show anyone.”
That’s one reason that major art heists,
according to Magness-Gardiner, “are rare. Or I’d go even further and say
very rare,” she says. “Honestly, most of what I see are burglaries that
don’t target certain paintings or prints; they target wealthy houses.”
And those thefts have very different results.
Incidental Burglaries
“I tend to look at art theft in three categories,” says Jordan Arnold, a managing director at K2 Intelligence,
an art risk advisory practice with headquarters in New York. “There’s
the ‘cave hit,’ the ‘fire sale,’ and the ‘long bet.’” The cave hit, says
Arnold, is closest to a targeted art heist, wherein a group of people
target specific art to put it in some sort of underground collection.
Unsurprisingly, this is the least frequent type of theft—more likely to
occur regularly in Bond films than in real life. More common is
the fire sale. It’s “the opportunistic criminal, where they’re looking
to flip the work to a fence or unscrupulous dealer,” Arnold says. This
often happens when someone robs a house, sees an artwork, takes it, and
tries to get rid of it fast. Finally, the long bet is when “a thief
holds onto the art and hopes that it either goes unreported or the trail
goes cold,” Arnold says. “Then the thief will try to sell it some years
later to a proper gallery and claim it’s inherited.”
The empty wallspace where a painting by Henri Matisse was stolen during a robbery at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.
Photographer: Robin Utrecht/AFP/Getty Images
So:
How lucrative is it for the thief? “Very,” says Turbo Paul Hendry, a
former art thief who now lectures on art crime and runs the blog art hostage.
“Ninety-five percent of art theft is from private residences, and those
items are normally $10,000 or less. Once they’re stolen, they’re passed
through the hands of middlemen and reappear for their full market
value.” Hendry cites the example of a Meissen porcelain figurine. “You
might have 500 or 1000 versions of the same figure,” he says. “Who’s to
say which is stolen and which is not?”
On the rare occasion that a
multimillion-dollar work—a Picasso, say—is stolen, Hendry says that the
thief makes “pennies on the dollar.” Still, he says, “if a $10 million
painting sells for $100,000, that’s still pretty good for just a night’s
work.”
And how often is the thief caught? Almost never, says
Magness-Gardiner. She estimates that the FBI has a recovery statistic of
“below 10 percent,” which means thieves pull off art crimes 90 percent
of the time. Hendry has an even dimmer view. “Only about 2 [percent] or 3
percent of art is ever recovered,” he says. “When you get to high value
stuff, maybe it gets up a little higher, to around 5 percent.”
Often,
art theft is so successful because “sometimes people don’t even
recognize that the art’s gone missing” says Magness-Gardiner. “It could
be in a storage facility, or in the basement of someone’s house, and it
can often be years before anyone notices it’s gone.”
Frames that held five paintings stolen from the Musee d'Art Moderne in Paris in 2010.
Photographer: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
It
should be no surprise, then, that when criminals have a multiyear lead
time, selling the art is easy. “Often, even when we find the stolen
property, we don’t find the thief,” Magness-Gardiner says. “It’s often
passed through so many different hands, and is years later, so actually
figuring out who stole the work is pretty rare.”
Prevention
The
way for most collectors to protect themselves, Arnold says, is to do
routine collection audits. “The window of time between when it’s taken
and when it’s reported dictates the likelihood of recovery,” he says.
The
way for most buyers to ensure they’re not purchasing stolen art, Arnold
continues, “is not just to ask the appropriate questions, but to look
at the appropriate documents.” Someone might claim that they’ve had a
painting for 20 years, but can they show you a sales receipt? Shipping
records from the gallery they bought it from?
As the art market
continues to grow, Arnold says, that level of due diligence has become
increasingly exigent. “As art prices continue to soar, you should only
expect that criminals are going to look to works of art with greater
frequency,” he says. “Art is regularly selling for more than the average
cost of a home, but unlike a house,” he adds, “you can just pick art up
and walk away.”
International Police Meet in Attempt to Tackle Pink Panther Jewelry Heist Gang
The International Police Organization (Interpol)
has held a two-day meeting attended by investigators from 22 countries
to discuss how to stop a notorious group of jewelry thieves responsible
for hundreds of high-profile heists worldwide over the past decade. Borko IlincicOn
Wednesday, June 10, Interpol gathered nearly 60 specialists to tackle
the Pink Panther criminal nework. Investigators believe that the network
is made up of about 800 members, many from the former Yugoslavia. They
say the group has stolen jewelery worth about 334 million euros (US$ 378
million) during 380 robberies commited in 35 countries since 1999.
Interpol launched its Pink Panthers Project back in 2007, building a
database of DNA, fingerprints and photos with which law enforcement
agencies worldwide could identify, locate and arrest suspected members.
The project saw some successes, including the arrest of Borko Ilincic
– suspected to be a key member of the gang – who was detained in Spain
in 2014. Interpol issued a red notice letter for the capture of Ilincic
after receiving a request from the United Arab Emirates, linked to a
2007 robbery – when some members of the group stole jewelry worth US$ 3.4 million from a shopping center,making a movie-like escape by jumping into luxurious display cars and driving them out of the mall through the windows.
The group is also responsible for the biggest jewelery theft in Japanese history
to date in which, according to BBC, about US$ 30 million of jewelry was
swiped from a shop in Tokyo in March 2004. A necklace they stole, known
as the Countess of Vendome, is reportedly worth US$ 21 million alone.
The culprits were caught and sentenced.
Last week, on June 2, Croatian police in cooperation with law enforcement from Serbia, Austria and Germany arrested six alleged Pink Panthers aged from 28 to 46 in Zagreb. Three of the suspects are Serb, two are Bosnian and one is from Montenegro.
Police charged them with organizing a criminal group and the illegal
possesion of firearms, having uncovered a stash of weapons in raids.
Authorities suspect the group was planning a heist. Apart from the
weapons, they found fake police uniforms,
walkie-talkies, tools for cutting metal along with two Audi A6 cars
that had been reported stolen. Police believe they were would-be getaway
cars.
The group has achieved almost mythical status in former Yugoslav
countries as a result of having run rings around local and international
police forces for years. Their story is told in a 2013 documentary
called Smash and Grab: The Story of The Pink Panthers. The Guardian names them the world's best diamond thieves.
The group is highly organized, performing its heists in record times and usually using bold disguises, for instance dressing up as women. They were able to organize several prison breaks for members who wound up behind bars.
Hundreds of Watches Are Stolen but a Victim Remains Undaunted
Photo
The packed Lifshitz Gallery on the East Side, where Elias Lifshitz has refurbished timepieces by Rolex and Cartier.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Thirty-five
years ago, a Mexican sculptor named Elias Lifshitz, who had recently
moved to New York City to accept the challenge he more or less knew from
a song — “If you can make it here,” he said this week, “you can make it
anyplace” — opened a little shop on East 77th Street. He called it
Lifshitz Gallery, and there he learned an early, hard lesson: Not as
many people were interested in buying art — his or anyone else’s — as he
had hoped.
Then he bought a watch — a broken watch — at a flea market. He took it to a desk in the back of his shop.
“I was good with my hands,” he said. He got it working.
“Then
I started going to flea markets and buying watches for $20,” he said.
He got them ticking, too, and set about figuring out what they were
worth.
“There was a book,” he said. “It tells you the value.”
The
watches sold for far more than he had paid for them. He expanded his
travels to distant flea markets, scooping up watches and pretty much
anything else that caught his eye and bringing it all back to Lifshitz
Gallery.
Photo
The gallery contains an odd collection of items, including antiques and art pieces.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Its door is a few steps below the sidewalk level. The shop was narrow when he moved in, and it was empty then. Today, it is crammed
with timepieces of every size, from piles of pocket watches to standing
clocks to wristwatches that hang from hooks like bunched bananas. Two
people cannot comfortably pass in the gallery’s lone aisle. If someone
wants to exit, anyone in the way must leave first.
The
watches are almost hidden behind stuff in this jungle. Over there: a
hanging lamp in a fruit motif, its shade stained glass. A phone that
looks like an antique roadster. A clown painting, a pencil etching of
the Piazza San Marco in Venice. A porcelain elephant. Pens.
Over
here: a Claddagh ring, a self-portrait in bronze, a robust photographic
collection of female nudes from the 1920s. “From a man in Mexico,” Mr.
Lifshitz, 73, said.
Threaded
among all these items are some valuable Rolexes and Cartiers and
watches by Tiffany, worth thousands of dollars. It is hard to believe
that Mr. Lifshitz knows where everything is but he does.
And he was not the only one.
On
March 19, Mr. Lifshitz entered the shop and right away knew something
was off, he said this week. The little back room behind his workstation,
where he fixes watches, was a wreck. There was a door back there that
led to the basement of the apartment building above but it was still
locked. Next to it was a large hole in the wall. It looked like the Hulk
had broken into the place.
To
get to that wall, a burglar needed to pass through three locked doors
but a person could open them all with the same key, which he apparently
had. He broke into a neighboring computer repair store, just to grab a
duffel bag to carry watches.
Four hundred fifty watches or so went into the bag, Mr. Lifshitz said.
Photo
Mr. Lifshitz in the shop. He began fixing and reselling watches when he had trouble selling artwork.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
One of them was a copy of a Rolex that Paul Newman wore. Mr. Lifshitz described this and many other missing watches to the detectives. “I have a computer in my head,” he said.
Detectives
spoke to workers at the computer store and at a hair salon in the
building, and quickly made an arrest at a motel in Queens, where they
found a man identified as Arsen Canaj, 47, with a bag of watches, a
hammer, a saw and a crowbar, all covered in white Sheetrock dust similar
to that found near the hole in the wall, according to court documents.
Mr. Canaj is free while his case is pending; there is a hearing
scheduled for June.
His
connection to the building, and how he got a key, if he in fact is the
burglar, is unclear, and the police and Mr. Canaj’s lawyer declined to
elaborate this week.
Today, Mr. Lifshitz carries on, with three complaints.
One, he wants his watches back. They are in police custody as evidence.
Two, his right hand shakes. “It made my Parkinson’s come back,” he said.
Three,
no one wears watches anymore. “Now, people are with the phone,” he
said. “They are robots. American robots. Pretty girls, you can’t even
talk to them with the things in their ears.”
But he smiled on Thursday when he thought of the song that brought him here.
“I made it,” he said.
Cannes jewellery heist adds to trail of Pink Panther-style raids
La Croisette and the Festival Palace at Cannes. Photo: Reuters
All eyes were on Cannes last week, as the
world's most glamorous film stars, including Charlize Theron and Natalie
Portman, gathered for its 68th annual film festival. But while the
Ruinart flowed and the Chopard diamonds twinkled, there was one shadow
looming over events.
Just days before festivities began, the
French Riviera city had been hit by a violent jewellery heist that
shocked its 70,000 inhabitants and caused alarm around the world.
At
11am on May 5, a masked man wielding a pistol burst through the front
door of the Cartier store on Cannes' palm-fringed thoroughfare, La
Croisette, followed by two accomplices.
A British police officer leaves a safe deposit building on Hatton Garden. Photo: Reuters
They seized £13 million ($A26 million) worth of jewellery and
watches, before escaping in a stolen Mercedes getaway car driven by a
fourth gang member.
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The crime — which, ironically, wouldn't have been out of place in a
Hollywood script — is the latest in a string of similar attacks. In
February, a £97,000 Calvin Klein dress, studded with 6000 pearls and
worn by Lupita Nyong'o at this year's Oscars, was taken from The London
Hotel in West Hollywood while the actress was out of the room.
A
month later, £6.5 million worth of jewels and art were stolen after a
15-strong gang held up two armoured vans in Burgundy. In April, robbers
snatched £3.6 million of Chanel jewels from a collector's car while it
was stuck in traffic near Paris.
Holes bored through a half-metre-thick
concrete wall drilled into a vault in a safe deposit centre in Hatton
Garden, London. Photo: AFP
And then, of course, there was the audacious Easter raid on the
Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company in which £60 million worth of
precious stones and cash was stolen in an operation that lasted more
than 50 hours and saw thieves use an industrial power drill to bore a
45cm-wide entry hole in the underground vault.
Last week, Scotland Yard arrested nine men in connection with the affair.
The
identity of the Cannes perpetrators may never be known, although the
involvement of established criminal gangs is a given. The case in
particular bears the hallmarks of Europe's notorious Pink Panthers — a
loose, many-headed network whose origins lie in the Balkans mafia of the
1990s. Known for their brazen but meticulous robberies, its members
often hail from military backgrounds (such as the elite, now disbanded,
Serbian unit, the JSO). They were given their name by the Daily Mail,
due to similarities between a heist at Graff, the New Bond Street
jewellers, and Peter Sellers' famous Inspector Clouseau film.
Lupita Nyong'o arriving at the 87th Annual Academy Awards. Photo: Getty Images
It has also been suggested that the Panthers may have been involved, behind the scenes, in the Hatton Garden raid.
Whatever the truth, one thing is certain: the recent spree is evidence
of the rapidly growing — and ever more unwieldy — black market in
jewellery and precious stones, which Jim Dickie, a former detective
superintendent within the Specialist Crime Directorate at New Scotland
Yard, estimates to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds: "It's
becoming more organised — crime groups have always been involved in
thefts, but because banks no longer have large amounts of cash on the
premises, they're targeting other areas."
For those behind raids,
the first priority, once the crime is committed, is usually to take the
loot abroad. A prearranged contact — known as "the courier" — will take
it across borders to buyers usually in cities where diamond trading is
widespread, such as Antwerp.
Payment will be in cash; the
criminals will have an idea of the loot they'll be passing on and will
have normally arranged a price — around 20 per cent of the legal market
value — with the buyer in advance. Thieves keep three-quarters of that
sum and the rest goes to the courier, says film-maker Havana Marking,
who spent a year investigating gang members while filming her acclaimed
documentary Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers:
"It's not as profitable as it might appear, but if you're talking about a
large heist, they're still making £100,000 to £200,000 out of a
weekend's work."
Lupita Nyong'o at the Oscars at the
Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles in the dress that was later stolen. Photo: AP
The identity of the buyer is unlikely to be known to the thieves,
and vice versa. Instead, the liaison will be organised by a remote —
and again anonymous — individual. Dickie likens this to the way spy
rings operate: "It's a cell system, and only certain members of each
cell will know each other."
Should one member be arrested, the
others are protected. This first buyer — known as "the fence" — will
then process the jewels. Gold will be melted down and precious gems
extracted (diamonds are the biggest earner and usually the focus of any
operation).
Where stones are particularly large or distinctive,
the fence will recut them, though whole stones are preferred since the
larger they are, the more they're worth.
From there, the gems have
one of two fates: they may be returned to the legal market, being
resold multiple times — Marking says the fence will receive around 30 to
40 per cent of the market value, with the price gradually rising as the
jewels pass from one dealer to the next — or they may remain in the
underworld, used as currency to buy drugs, weapons or people.
Part
of the beauty, from the criminals' point of view, is that carrying gems
is unlikely to arouse authorities' suspicion. Metal detectors don't
pick them up, they're lighter in weight than gold bars and less
conspicuous than suitcases of cash. As Marking puts it: "You don't even
need to hide them — they're just in your pocket." They also retain their
value while national currencies fluctuate; both al-Qaeda and the Somali
terrorist group al-Shabaab are thought to trade in diamonds.
Given
the sprawling and global nature of the "industry", it's little wonder
that stolen jewels are rarely recovered. There's no single,
comprehensive register of legally bought pieces. The Kimberley Process,
the UN-backed certification scheme aimed at eliminating blood diamonds,
stipulates that rough-stone shipments are accompanied by a uniquely
numbered certificate.
But once batches are divided and gems cut,
they're no longer accounted for. Some owners will register their
possessions privately. Organisations such as the Gemological Institute
of America (GIA), offer certification services, recording stones' unique
features, cut and colour.
But even when jewels are registered,
the system is far from foolproof, says Julian Radcliffe, founder of the
Art Loss Register: "While, if it was resubmitted, it might be able to be
matched, if it has been recut, it would almost certainly not
be." Likewise, if a stone is damaged in a raid, its distinguishing
characteristics are altered and its traceability diminished.
Nor
is there a single record of looted items. The Art Loss Register, the
world's largest private database of missing art, antiques and
collectibles, includes 70,000 pieces of stolen jewellery and 50,000
watches, while industry bodies such as the London Diamond Bourse
circulate details of stolen goods in an attempt to prevent them being
resold. But the onus is on individual victims to register the missing
items.
Which is not to say there's no hope for victims. Very
occasionally, when a stolen gem has re-entered the market, someone
identifies it. This happened recently in New York when a grader at the
GIA noticed characteristics in a newly purchased yellow diamond that
matched a stolen stone. The client who'd brought it in was unaware of
its illegal provenance — as was the trader who sold it to them. A
private settlement was reached.
Meanwhile, the past decade has
seen growing cooperation between European police forces. Both the Met
and the French police will be collaborating with Interpol, which set up a
dedicated Pink Panther working group in 2007.
One promising line
of enquiry in the Hatton Garden case has been DNA samples which were
taken in the wake of a similar raid on a Berlin bank two years ago.
And
lately there have been some high-profile arrests. In February, eight
criminals were sentenced to terms of up to 15 years for stealing more
than £65 million in watches and jewellery, including one ring set with a
31 carat diamond said to be worth more than £4 million, in dual heists
at the Harry Winston shop on Paris' Avenue Montaigne.
In one
robbery, which lasted less than 20 minutes, the gunmen disguised
themselves as women, sporting wigs, skirts, stockings and high heels.
The
same month, four suspected Panthers were arrested in Vienna with stolen
jewellery worth more than £360,000, including 18 watches that were
stolen during a robbery in Montreux, Switzerland, in January.
And
as the black market booms, there is evidence that criminals may be
getting sloppy. In their rush to make a getaway, the Cannes raiders
dropped several expensive watches on the pavement. It has also been
claimed that those behind the German heist left bottles of beer at the
scene.
Still, those who lost their gems in Cannes shouldn't hold
their breath. Michael Levi, Professor of Criminology at Cardiff
University, says that, barring a disgruntled whistle-blower coming
forward, the chances of retrieving stolen loot are minimal: "It just
gets mixed up in the general trade."
As for Scotland Yard's
promise of a £20,000 reward for information leading to conviction —
well, that's little more than wishful thinking. As Dickie puts it: "If
you consider the potential value of what was stolen — £20,000 is
minuscule."
Eight Years
Eight years.
Eight years since A Cavalier (self portrait) was last seen in public.
Eight years ago person(s) unknown stole this Dutch masterpiece.
Eight years.
No news. No leads. No trace.
Someone out there knows something.
Someone out there knows where A Cavalier is.
Please don’t wait another eight years to come forward.
Husband and Wife Arrested for Stealing $350,000 Worth of Art From Coral Gables Mansion
Erbiti and Rojas.
Miami-Dade Corrections
Early last month, Eduardo Goudie was set to move into his new home
on North Greenway Drive in Coral Gables. He had already moved in his
eclectic art collection which featured contemporary painters from all
across the world, but when he returned to the home on April 3 he found
that five paintings worth a total of $350,000 had been cut from their
frames and taken.
Now police have nabbed Raluxi Raul Erbiti and Dania Rojas, a married couple, both 39 years old, for pulling off the heist.
According to NBC Miami,
one work by Cuban painter Leopoldo Romañach was worth $150,000, a work
by Cuban-American modernist Cundo Bermudez worth $50,000, a painting by
Cuban surrealist Wilfredo Lam valued at $75,000, a work by Pakistani
artist Jamali, the originator of "Mystical Expressionism," worth
$25,000, and another unknown artist's work valued at $50,000.
Coral
Gables police began an investigation with the Hialeah PD, Miami-Dade
PD, the Broward Sheriff's Office, the DEA, and Homeland Security which
soon lead to Erbiti and Rojas.
An informant contacted Erbiti last
week and agreed to meet him in the parking lot of a Sam's Club in
Miramar to discuss the possible sale of the paintings. The couple then
showed up the next day at the informant's office and offered two
paintings for $90,000. Eventually the price agreed upon was $150,000 for
the entire lot.
When they arranged to meet again it wasn't the
informant but rather police who were waiting for Erbiti and Rojas. They
now face charges of second-degree grand theft and dealing in stolen
property.
Collector’s tip-off helps police rescue big stash of church relics
More than 60 artefacts stolen from
English and Welsh country churches over the past few years have been
recovered by police after they were alerted by a collector.
While some items have been returned, the West Mercia force is
launching an appeal to trace the owners of the many relics as yet
unidentified.
Police have arrested a 50-year-old man from Wales in connection
with the series of thefts, which ATG has covered on many occasions
to alert the trade. The man was released on bail and is due to be
further interviewed on his return to Hereford police station.
Det Con Tony Lewis, based in Hereford, told ATG: "Operation
Icarus is a West Mercia-headed investigation into multiple theft
offences from churches across England and Wales.
"West Mercia is heading the investigation as we have the highest
number of offences on us - eight as it stands today - but I am sure
we will have more as items get identified. Other offences have
occurred in Breconshire, Monmouthshire, Devon, Suffolk and Kent to
name but a few counties.
"Last year a private collector from the south east of England
contacted the Met Police Antiques and Antiquities Department. He
made due diligence reports to them as he was concerned that he may
have bought items which could have been stolen."
The collector recognised items from media coverage of the theft.
As a result of his information, the Met recovered a number of items
and several of these were traced to thefts in Herefordshire, and
Holy Trinity Church at Torbryan in Devon.
DC Lewis added: "In February West Mercia officers attended the
address of the original collector in the south east. At that time
some 40 exhibits were seized into police control.
"Some of these exhibits are multiple items so we have around 60
plus items safe and secure, being held at a West Mercia police
station.
"These were photographed and the hunt was on to try and identify
where they had come from and rehome them as soon as possible to
their rightful home."
Torbryan Screen
Many of the thefts caused damage to the churches when the works
were hacked away, with one of the worst cases being Torbryan, where
a pair of 15th century oak panels was ripped out from the rood
screen.
The decorative panels, bearing paintings of St Victor of
Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch, are considered of national
importance, and were stolen in August, 2013 (reported in ATG No
2104).
The rood screen and its panels are one of only a handful of such
artworks in England which survived the Reformation.
Stolen items included stone and wood carvings, cloth items,
stained glass, tombstone lids, brass plaques, misericords, sections
of carved rood screens and small glass items.
DC Lewis said: "West Mercia have sought the help of a number of
organisations and individuals who are all working together to
identify the items we have recovered. So far we have identified
some 21 items - some of which have been returned to their home,
including the Torbryan item.
"We are grateful for the assistance of those helping us to
identify these items.
"We would ask all church wardens/clergy/parishioners to check
their churches to look and see if there are any items missing.
"We believe the offences started in 2011 and will have ended
late summer/early autumn 2014.
"Some items are very small and some have been removed from dark
corners or high up in walls.
"As such, the thefts may not have been noticed. In some cases
attempts have been made to cover a theft, with a different item
placed where the stolen item was taken from."
The Churches Conservation Trust, the national charity that cares
for 347 unique churches around England including Torbryan church,
faces a bill of £7,000 to restore the damage caused by the thieves
hacking the panels out of the screen during the theft. The trust
has launched a campaign to raise the money. - See more at:
http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/2015/may/26/collectors-tip-off-helps-police-rescue-big-stash-of-church-relics/#sthash.gmRYo1hb.dpuf
Picasso Recovery in Newark
Shines Light on Art Theft
Stolen pieces can vanish for decades and losses are
difficult to estimate
An image
of the 1911 painting ‘La Coiffeuse,’ by Pablo Picasso. The artwork was
recovered by customs officials in Newark in December.
Sculpture
specialist Alice Levi Duncan was cataloging two early 20th-century bronze
statuettes this winter when she realized something unusual.
Both of
the pieces were unique casts, meaning no subsequent editions had been made from
that mold—“very rare in the bronze world,” said Ms. Duncan, a director at
Gerald Peters Gallery. “It’s like winning the lottery twice.”
As it
turned out, the sculptures, consigned for sale at Gerald Peters, had been
swiped in 1983 from another Manhattan gallery, Hirschl & Adler.
The fact
was only uncovered when Ms. Duncan, who remembered selling one to Hirschl &
Adler years earlier when she worked at Christie’s, called to confirm that the
work—a sculpture of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney by Prince Paul Troubetzkoy—was
unique.
Such
recoveries offer a window into the shadowy world of art crime.
The
extent of the problem is hard to pin down. At one point the Federal Bureau of
Investigation estimated that art and cultural crimes, which include fraud,
theft and looting, resulted in billions of dollars of losses each year, though
the agency now says those figures are too hard to verify.
Complicating
matters: While law-enforcement agencies track such crimes, there is no central
governmental repository that lists missing objects, which may, in the case of a
Picasso recovered in December, vanish in Paris and reappear in Newark, N.J.
The 1911
cubist painting, estimated to be worth millions, went missing from a storeroom
at Paris’s Centre Pompidou. It resurfaced in a shipment from Belgium, labeled
as an “Art Craft Toy” with a declared value of $37.
Former
NYPD Detective Mark Fishstein, an investigator for the art-risk advisory
practice at the consulting firm K2 Intelligence LLC. He is holding a photograph
of himself with artwork he recovered.
The theft
was reported in 2001. But the painting could have theoretically gone missing
two years earlier: It was placed in storage in 1999 after being lent to a
German museum. The loss was only detected after a subsequent loan request from
India, according to court papers.
It isn’t
clear how customs officials at Newark, among the busier ports in the U.S.,
unearthed a stolen artwork the size of a place mat. A spokesman for U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations declined
to comment, citing a continuing investigation.
Centre
Pompidou spokesman Benoît Parayre said the museum has beefed up its security
and collection-management system since the theft of the painting, titled “La
Coiffeuse.”
Tracking
down stolen art can take decades and may turn on lucky breaks like anonymous
tips or calls to police by suspicious potential buyers.
During
his time with the New York Police Department, Mark Fishstein, a detective who
specialized in art crime and retired in October, handled cases ranging from
break-ins to the disappearance of a Norman Rockwell painting worth more than $1
million from a Queens storage facility in 2013.
“You can
never give up hope because if they are stolen, some people hold them for a
predetermined amount of time and then think it’s safe to sell,” said Mr.
Fishstein, who now works as an investigator for the art-risk advisory practice
at the consulting firm K2 Intelligence LLC.
When
objects do resurface, it is often through the combined efforts of
law-enforcement agencies working with insurance companies and a small field of
private businesses that specialize in detecting art fraud, tracking down
purloined works and conducting the sometimes delicate negotiations surrounding
their return.
Once an
art object is reported stolen, police typically contact sister agencies, such
as the FBI and Interpol, said NYPD Detective Michael Dorto. Police also
register the theft with one of the private groups that compile stolen-art data.
The
point, he said, is to “render this art useless” by indicating it is stolen.
For
years, the biggest such operator has been the Art Loss Register, a London
company that maintains what it says is the largest international database of
stolen art objects and antiques. Last year, it conducted more than 400,000 paid
searches, with more than 5,000 queries raising a red flag about an item’s
provenance. About 150 or so objects are recovered each year.
The group
also retrieves lost art and is building up a new business line: a database of
forged items and likely fakes, according to Chairman Julian Radcliffe.
Some of
his company’s methods, including payments to informants, have been questioned
by others in the art world, though Mr. Radcliffe dismisses the criticism.
“The
whole question of payments, police persuasion—we wouldn’t be in the business if
we were operating illegally,” he said.
Two years
ago, a group of former employees started a rival business, Art Recovery Group,
led by lawyer Christopher Marinello. It uses a database of disputed art,
launched earlier this year, that uses image-recognition software to search for
matches in auction catalogs and other materials. A separate division of the
firm specializes in art recovery and dispute resolution.
When the
long-lost bronze statuettes came to light at Gerald Peters, the other gallery,
Hirschl & Adler, called on Mr. Marinello to help arrange their return.
While the Troubetzkoy work had no distinguishing characteristics, the other
piece—a compact statuette of a woman holding a flower by New York sculptor Paul
Manship, known for his gilded “ Prometheus” at Rockefeller Center—was mounted
on a marble base with distinctive veining.
The two
works are now worth an estimated $250,000.
The
private stolen-art databases can make it “relatively easy to investigate
something if you know where to look and find a tainted record,” said Eric
Baumgartner, a senior vice president at Hirschl & Adler.
Britain's most prolific burglar: Crook who has stolen from 250 homes is jailed... just 16 days after release
The thief's 54-year crime spree seems never ending after he was put behind bars for another six years
Prolific: Britain's burgling menace Simon Berkowitz
Britain's most prolific burglar has been jailed yet again after breaking into a retired couple's home just 16 days after being given an early release.
Career crook Simon Berkowitz has confessed to being addicted to breaking into other people's homes.
The criminal menace has committed at least 250 break ins during a 54-year career of crime.
Berkowitz' best-known crime was trying to sell stolen documents regarding then-leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown's affair with his secretary in the days leading up to the 1992 General Election.
He had come across the documents after breaking into the politician's solicitor's office.
The
crook had been out of prison for barely two weeks after being freed
half way through a five and a half year sentence when he travelled to
Devon in search of properties to burgle.
Berkowitz has
plagued affluent seaside towns all along the South coast and the genteel
resort of Sidmouth, Devon, has been a favourite hunting ground.
Victim: Former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown
He broke into the home of pensioners John and Ann Searle on Guy Fawkes night last year while they were away on holiday.
He left no clues at the scene but was trapped by CCTV when he used Mr Searle's stolen bank cards to obtain £1,100 in the space of 12 hours at cash machines in Sidmouth and Exmouth.
He
also used Mr Searle's stolen bus pass to wander up and down the coast,
stopping at Budleigh Salterton, Bournemouth, and Dorchester.
Berkowitz
was only caught when police issued his picture to local papers and
television channels and he was spotted by a member of the public having
Sunday lunch in a pub in Sidmouth.
Police arrested him
on the sea front carrying a rucksack which contained a burglary kit
consisting of metal levers, gaffer tape, two torches, a piece of wire
bent into a hook, and a magnifying glass which he used to study
jewellery and antiques before he took them.
He denied
burgling the house in Sidmouth and told Exeter Crown Court he had no
need to steal because he inherited £4,000 from his mother who died
during his last jail sentence.
He said he found the bank cards with their PIN numbers on slips of paper which were conveniently attached with elastic bands.
PA
Justice: Exeter Crown Court
The jury took less than an hour to convict
him after hearing his list of previous convictions which date back to
Worthing in 1961, and include 37 different burglary convictions covering
250 different raids and recent jail terms of three and a half and four
and a half years.
Berkowitz, 68, of Hove, denied burglary but admitted handling and five counts of using the bank cards fraudulently.
He
was found guilty and jailed for six years by Judge Francis Gilbert, QC,
who told him:"In your evidence you said you felt sorry for all the
people you have burgled over the years.
"I find that to be completely and utterly false.
"You do not feel the least bit of sympathy for what you have done.
"It is perfectly obvious you have no regrets or remorse whatsoever.
"Burglary is your chosen way of life.
"This one took place barely two weeks after your release.
"You are a persistent burglar.
"You have an appalling record and it is extremely likely you will continue to offend."
'We didn't really think we'd get away with it': The astonishing story of
how two young Irish men completed an audacious £7m art heist
In 1956 Paul Hogan shocked the world by unhooking an Impressionist
masterpiece from a wall in the Tate and carrying it calmly out of the
gallery
As Paul Hogan came dashing down the steps of London’s Tate Gallery in
1956 with a £7m Impressionist masterpiece under his arm after coolly
unhooking it from its hanging place moments earlier, his picture was
taken by a press photographer who happened to be waiting outside.
The resulting image shows the young Irish art student, the belt of
his tweed overcoat flapping as he moves at speed, grappling with the
heavy gilt frame containing Berthe Morisot’s Jour d’Eté and two
large pieces of card attempting to cover the image of two French ladies
on a boating lake. After jumping into a taxi, Mr Hogan realised he had
no idea where to take his loot and instructed the driver to head to the
only place he could think of - Piccadilly Circus.
As art heists go, it was audacious but it was hardly the crime of the century. Indeed, it was never meant to be.
Mr
Hogan, then 25, and his accomplice, Bill Fogarty, a trainee vet from
Galway, had staged the theft on 12 April 1956 solely to highlight
Ireland’s claim to the Hugh Lane collection - some 39 paintings,
including world class Impressionist works such as Jour d’Eté,
which had been bequeathed by their wealthy owner to both London and
Dublin before he perished on the Lusitania in 1915. A last-minute
codicil to the art dealer’s will had promised the collection to the
Irish Republic but because it was unwitnessed, a previous clause giving
the paintings to the Tate was enforced by Britain - creating a further
source of rancour between the two nations. Berthe Morisot’s Jour d’Eté, stolen by Paul Hogan in 1956
Such was the desire of the two young men to gain publicity for their
brazen daylight snatch that they had tipped off the Irish News Agency
on Fleet Street about a “demonstration” to take place that day outside
the Tate. It was the agency’s photographer who took the shot of Mr
Hogan, which was then promptly surrendered to police once it became
clear what had happened and used to try to trace the suspects.
From
the point of view of the “thieves”, who claimed the raid on behalf of
the Irish National Students Council, the operation was a brilliant
success. The story made headlines around the world and even served to
knock the other great event of that day - Grace Kelly’s wedding to
Prince Ranier of Monaco - from the front pages of some British
newspapers.
But what has remained secret until now is the extent
to which the antics of Mr Hogan, who was the son of a senior Irish civil
servant and aide to Irish Taoiseach Eamon De Valera, and Mr Fogarty
created panic at the highest levels of the British state.
The Scotland Yard file on the theft of Jour d’Eté had been ordered to remain under lock and key for 75 years until 2031 but it has now been released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act.
The
86-page file, which has been heavily redacted in places, reveals that
although police were confident they had identified the two students, who
went on the run after their escapade and eventually made it back to
Dublin via Blackpool and Liverpool, the Yard and the Director of Public
Prosecutions resolved not to prosecute the pair for fear of turning them
into “martyrs” for the Irish cause.
The
documents show that the authorities were doubly reluctant to put the
men on trial because they felt the inevitable publicity would expose the
shambolic security at the Tate, where national treasures had been hung
unsecured and a warder had let Mr Hogan walk out of the building in the
belief he was taking the Morisot (worth £10,000 in 1956 but now valued
at £7m) to be photographed. Officers were concerned that news of the
ease with which the painting had been taken would spark a spree of more
hard-nosed raids at the gallery, the custodian of key works by British
artists such as Constable and Turner. Sir John Rothenstein carries the painting 'Jour d'Ete' into the Tate after it was handed into the Irish embassy
Mr Hogan, now aged 84, told The Independent he and his
colleague had been astonished to get away with their stunt: “We had
decided our only way of getting away with it would be walk out of the
front door. But we didn’t really think we’d get away with it. I’m not
surprised if the authorities were reluctant to prosecute - if I had been
the head of the Tate Gallery, the last thing I would have wanted was
further publicity.”
After a four-day manhunt, which saw watches
put in place at Heathrow and all ports to try to intercept the painting
as well as an alert being issued to Interpol, the missing painting was
returned to the Tate via the Irish embassy and an anonymous female
friend of Mr Hogan.
In a memo to colleagues, the unnamed
Metropolitan Police commander dealing with the theft outlined the
reasons why he and the DPP had decided not to pursue charges.
The
officer wrote: “This was not a larceny with intent to sell the picture
to somebody else. Although it was not exactly of a political nature, it
was made in a misguided sense of patriotism… If these men were charged
they would then be heroes or martyrs.”
The officer then added
grumpily: “One other point too I mentioned, that in such proceedings,
the complete lack of security measures, so far as a National Picture
Gallery was concerned, would be revealed and it might encourage others
with a real felonious intent.”
The plot to highlight the injustice of Sir Hugh Lane’s bequest
residing in London had been hatched just a few weeks earlier when Mr
Hogan, then a student at the Dublin College of Art, came across a
pamphlet written by the collector’s aunt, Lady Augusta Gregory,
agitating for her nephew’s paintings to be restored to Ireland.
Lane,
a Cork-born art collector, became determined during his lifetime to see
Dublin host a world-class art collection and offered his paintings -
including Renoir’s Les Parapluies and works by Manet, Pissarro
and Vuillard - to Ireland on the basis that they be hosted in a
purpose-built gallery in the capital.
When no gallery was
forthcoming, Lane changed his will to leave the works to London. But
shortly before his death when the Lusitania cruise liner was sunk by a
German torpedo the collector renewed his bequest to Dublin. Because the
document was never witnessed, Britain refused to recognise it as legally
binding and removed the collection to the Tate as the Irish Republic
was declared in 1922.
Mr Hogan and Mr Fogarty, who it later
emerged was a member of the Official IRA, hatched their scheme while
walking home together one evening and then travelled to London, staying
at the Irish Club in Belgravia to allow them to reconnoitre the gallery -
with the aid of a forged letter of introduction from the Dublin College
of Art - and select the Morisot as their target.
Detectives
investigating the theft likened the incident to the hijacking six years
earlier of the Stone of Scone by four Scottish students who stole the
relic from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950.
Another Yard
memo states: “I suggest that we treat this in the same way as the matter
of the Stone of Scone… The two students in this case apparently belong
to that school of thought which prefers action to words. I am reliably
informed that they cared little for the risk of discovery they ran when
they took the picture. This rather tends to explain the audacious manner
they adopted.”
The Yard file, released at the National Archives in Kew, west London, reveals the brazen nature of the theft. The file relating to the theft has been released after 59 years (Getty)
Dennis Fisk, an 18-year-old insurance clerk, was visiting the Tate to look at Jour d’Eté and other paintings when he noticed the two men approach the Morisot carrying two large pieces of cardboard.
In
his statement to police, Mr Fisk said: “Together they lifted the
picture from its hooks on the wall on to the floor and placed it between
the cardboard. The man carrying the picture when he had gone a few
paces turned round and nodded to the second man… I thought that these
men had the authority to remove this painting.”
The clerk then
recounted how he had queried what he had just seen with a gallery
attendant. He said: “I pointed to the blank space on the wall… and said
to him, ‘Shouldn’t there be a painting there?’. He said, ‘It has been
taken to the photographers and may be away a number of days’.”
The
words were prophetic - the painting was indeed being photographed ahead
of a short absence, though not in quite the manner the attendant had
imagined.
As well as garnering publicity, the theft also arguably
achieved the wider goal of its perpetrators. By 1959, it was announced
that Britain and Ireland would share the paintings - a deal which was
recently updated to ensure that 27 of the works remain permanently in
Dublin with the remaining 12 rotated between the two capitals every six
years.
And what became of the dashing patriotic art thieves? Mr
Fogarty died in 2002 in a state of poverty while Mr Hogan, who became a
senior Irish trade official, continues to live in his native Dublin.
Their
exploits could yet hit the big screen. Mr Hogan’s nephew, the Irish
actor Stephen Hogan, is in the process of writing a script with
Oscar-nominated collaborators to seek funding for a film.
In the meantime, one of its protagonists remains proud of his youthful flirtation with notoriety.
Paul
Hogan told The Independent: “We achieved what we set out to do. We were
enormously successful in putting the issue in the headlines. I don’t
think I was any more of a tearaway than anyone else I knew.”
Stolen 15th-century Torbryan church icons recovered by police
Holy Trinity church in Devon faces £7,000 costs to restore icons hacked out of their panels by thieves in 2013
The panels were recognised in an online sale by a collector who had seen media coverage of the stolen artefacts.
Photograph: Mark Passmore/Apex
Two priceless 15th -entury oak panels that were stolen from the rood screen of a west country church have been recovered by detectives.
The decorative oak panels were taken from Holy Trinity church at Torbryan in Devon in the summer of 2013.
Bearing images of St Victor of Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch,
the panels were found by the Metropolitan police’s art and antiques
unit after being spotted by a private collector in an online sale.
This led to a raid by specialist detectives in south London earlier
this year and the recovery of the panels, along with dozens of other
artefacts.
The rood screen and its panels are particularly precious as they are
one of only a handful of such artworks in England that survived the
reformation.
Despite elation at their recovery, the trust faces a £7,000 bill to
restore the damage – the result of the thieves hacking the panels out of
the screen – and has launched a campaign to raise the money. Currently they are in storage in Bristol.
Holy Trinity is one of 347 historic churches cared for by the charity the Churches Conservation Trust.
Its chief executive, Crispin Truman, said: “Torbryan rood screen is one
of the highlights of this internationally significant collection. The
theft of these unique artworks from Holy Trinity was a real blow, so
we’re delighted that they are now back in our hands.
“Unfortunately the damage caused as the thieves hacked them out of the church will cost a lot to put right.
“The CCT is committed to displaying unique artefacts like these
panels in their original setting and open to the public for everyone to
see and enjoy.”
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The
Rev Peter Ashman, the incumbent vicar, added: “The value of the panels
cannot be underestimated – they form part of a unique collection of
medieval paintings preserved from destruction during the reformation
housed in a beautiful and very special church. We look forward to their
safe return where they belong.”
Historian and presenter Dan Cruickshank, who backed the original
campaign to find the stolen panels, said: “I’m delighted that these
15th-century artworks – once feared lost forever – have been recovered.
The panels are irreplaceable examples of an important period in our art
and history, and pieces like this help us to learn about who we are as a
society. They should belong to everyone.”
The discovery of the screens prompted the police to set up an
operation codenamed Icarus, which has led to a treasure trove of other
church artefacts, including stonework, friezes, statues, paintings,
brasses, misericords, stained glass and bibles, being recovered.
Among the items already returned to where they belong are a pair of
misericords – mercy seats – that were taken from St Cuthbert’s Church at
Holme Lacy in Herefordshire. Saxon stonework has also been returned to
another church in Herefordshire, St David’s in Much Dewchurch.
Police are struggling to identify many of the items recovered, sometimes because churches do not know they have gone.
The collector who first went to the police wishes to remain
anonymous. It is understood he recognised the panels from media coverage
of the theft.
Since the theft, the Churches Conservation Trust have conducted an
audit of security at Holy Trinity, Torbryan, and a new alarm system is
now in place at the church.
The painted saints, once part of a procession of 40 panels stretching
the width of the church, are exceptionally rare because so few
figurative paintings, either on panels or stained glass, survived the
flurry of image-smashing during the reformation in the 16th century.
Most rood screens – which originally divided the nave from the altar
area of the church and supported carved crosses – were dismantled and
either burned or recycled for their wood. Those with representations of
saints were particularly targeted.
The Torbryan panels were restored in the 19th century from beneath
layers of whitewash that may have been deliberately applied to protect
them from iconoclasts. They were regarded as among the best preserved in
Britain.
The church itself is unusual because it was built in one phase,
between 1450 and 1470, with a spectacular fan-vaulted ceiling, instead
of the usual pattern of gradual extension over centuries. Both the
carving and the painting of the screen were of very high quality, and
the piece is believed to have been a contemporary commission from an
unknown master craftsman for the church.
Matisse From Gurlitt Collection Is Returned to Jewish Art Dealer’s Heirs
Christopher A. Marinello, a
lawyer who specializes in tracking down looted and stolen art, with the
recovered Matisse, "Femme Assise," in Munich on Friday.Credit
Wolf Heider-Sawall/Art Recovery, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
MUNICH
— The slide made public in November 2013 showing a painting of a woman
wearing a white blouse embroidered with blue, purple and red flowers,
with a fan on her lap, was grainy, but its subject was immediately
recognizable to Elaine Rosenberg. It showed a priceless Matisse. Her
family’s Matisse.
Christopher
A. Marinello, a lawyer who specializes in tracking down stolen art, was
in a New York hotel room at the time, when his phone rang. It was Ms.
Rosenberg, his client and a descendant of Paul Rosenberg,
one of the world’s leading dealers in Modern art, whose collection,
including the Matisse, “Femme Assise,” or “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in
an Armchair,” was looted by the Nazis.
“She told me, ‘That is our painting, go get it,’ ” Mr. Marinello said.
On
Friday, more than 70 years after its disappearance and after a year and
a half of hard-nosed negotiations, the painting was handed over to Mr.
Marinello, on behalf of the Rosenbergs, at an art storage facility in
southern Germany.
Part of the art trove hoarded by Cornelius Gurlitt
and discovered in his Munich apartment in 2012, it was one of the first
two paintings from the collection to make it back to the families of
the original Jewish owners.
Another
painting found in Mr. Gurlitt’s home, “Two Riders on the Beach,” by Max
Liebermann, was also handed over this week. Representatives of the
descendants of David Friedmann, a Jewish industrialist from Breslau,
whose art collection was looted by the Nazis, took possession of the
picture on Wednesday, said August J. Matteis Jr., a lawyer who
represents David Toren, a great-nephew.
The
restitutions this week are the culmination of a discovery that upended
the art world and laid bare the cumbersome bureaucracy in Germany that
still hampers the return of looted works, despite pledges by the
government to right the wrongs of previous generations. The Germans have
vowed to provide proactive clarification and a fair and just solution,
in keeping with Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.
Yet
for Mr. Marinello, getting to this day involved combing through roughly
250,000 documents, letters and photographs in the Rosenberg family’s
records; chasing down signatures of the rightful heirs and Mr. Gurlitt’s
descendants; and pressing the authorities, past one failed agreement
and through numerous phone calls and emails — including one exchange
with the leading German researcher in which she insisted that
“provenance research can’t be rushed.”
“The
Germans are sticklers for detail and accuracy, which is good and
important in provenance research, but following the process can be very
frustrating to people like my clients, who are humans who suffered at
the hands of one of the worst regimes in history,” Mr. Marinello said.
The
Rosenberg family thanked German officials for their cooperation and
encouraged others to pursue the return of looted works. “There is a
great deal to be learned from this case,” the family said in a
statement.
More
than 1,200 pieces were found in Mr. Gurlitt’s apartment, another 250 in
his Salzburg home. Two more works, including a Carl Spitzweg painting
and a Pissarro called “View of Paris,” have been recognized as looted art. A task force
established by the German government and the state of Bavaria continues
to investigate the ownership history of about 590 works, while Mr.
Gurlitt’s decision to leave his estate to the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland faces legal challenges.
Monika
Grütters, who was appointed Germany’s minister of culture shortly after
the collection’s existence became public, responded to international
pressure by doubling the country’s budget for provenance research to 4
million euros, or $4.6 million, and establishing the German Center for
Cultural Property Losses. The center serves as a clearing house for all
provenance research in the country and as a central point for people
seeking information about a missing painting or the history of a work in
a private collection.
Germany
has invested €13 million in provenance research and restituted 12,000
objects over the past decade, many of them books. But families and even
small museums have been stymied by uncertainty over where to go for
information related to looted works, as well as some insensitivity as to
what is at stake.
Prosecutors in Augsburg, Germany, who confiscated the works
from Mr. Gurlitt’s home in February 2012 as part of a tax
investigation, kept the discovery a secret. Only a year later, after a
wave of international criticism over its handling of the art, did the
Culture Ministry intervene.
Mr. Marinello, who runs Art Recovery International,
based in London, sent documents proving the Rosenberg claim to the
judge in Augsburg who had jurisdiction over the case at the time. They
included inventory cards listing the Matisse as item 1721, and a 1946
declaration to the French government signed by Paul Rosenberg that
included the Matisse among works still missing.
Mr. Marinello never received a response.
Several
weeks later, he composed a letter in German and sent it directly to Mr.
Gurlitt. That led to negotiations that nearly resulted in the
painting’s return. But hours before he was to board a flight from London
in March 2014, his phone rang — Mr. Gurlitt had fired his lawyer, and
the restitution was off.
Two months later, Mr. Gurlitt, 81, died
in his home, leaving his collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern. Although
agreements reached with the German and Bavarian governments before his
death stipulated that any works that were found to have been looted were
to be returned to their rightful owners, the Rosenbergs and other
families now faced negotiations not only with the German task force but
also the Munich probate court handling the estate.
All that time, the painting sat in a warehouse outside Munich.
Mr.
Marinello took possession of the work on behalf of the Rosenberg family
at the storage depot early Friday. He declined to say what the family
intended to do with the painting, aside from having it cleaned to remove
the layers of grime and to restore the original brilliance of its
colors.
The first step, however, would be to get it out of the country. “It is definitely leaving Germany,” he said.
Murder hunt launched after death of infamous criminal John 'Goldfinger' Palmer
Convicted comnan, John 'Goldfinger' Palmer was initially thought to have died
as a result of natural causes, but police now confirm they are treating his
death as a murder inquiry
Police launch a murder inquiry after death of John 'Goldfinger' PalmerPhoto: Rex
By Martin Evans and Gordon Rayner
7:18AM BST 02 Jul 2015
John “Goldfinger” Palmer, one of
Britain’s most notorious criminals, has become the latest underworld
figure to fall victim to the “curse of Brink’s-MAT” after he was shot
dead at his home.
Palmer,
who was tried for melting down gold bars stolen in the £26 million theft
of bullion and jewellery from a warehouse at Heathrow Airport, is the
eighth person with close links to the 1983 robbery to be shot dead.
The 64-year-old was initially reported to have died of natural causes
when his body was found at his home in South Weald, near Brentwood,
Essex, on June 24, but Essex Police have now launched a murder inquiry
after a post-mortem examination found he had been shot in the chest.
Palmer, who was once described as Britain’s richest criminal with a
fortune of £300m, was jailed at the Old Bailey in 2001 over his
involvement in a vast timeshare swindle, which cost thousands of British
holidaymakers their life savings.
John ‘Goldfinger’ Palmer, with his former wife Marnie in 1987, was said to have had a £300 million fortune
But he was best known for his connection to the Brink’s-MAT heist, for
which he was tried in 1987. He was said to have melted down bullion from
the robbery in his back garden, but he denied knowing the bullion was
stolen and was acquitted.
The Brink’s-MAT robbery was
carried out by a gang of six, who had expected to find £3 million in
cash but instead discovered three tonnes of gold in the warehouse owned
by an American security company.
Only three men – Micky
McAvoy, Brian Robinson and his brother-in-law Anthony Black, a security
guard at the warehouse – were ever convicted of carrying out the
robbery.
Because the gang had no expertise in handling
gold, they had to recruit other underworld figures to help them dispose
of the metal and launder their money.
Days before his death he had been told that he faced 15 years in jail for another alleged timeshare fraud
Inevitably, gangsters connected with the robbery fell out with each other and violence followed.
Nick Whiting, who was accused by some gang members of being an
informant, was the first to be killed, in 1990, when he was stabbed nine
times and shot twice. The same year Charlie Wilson, one of the Great
Train Robbers, who had been hired to launder some of the proceeds of
Brink’s-MAT, was shot dead on his doorstep in Marbella.
Donald Urquhart, a money launderer, was found shot dead in 1995. The
following year Keith Hedley, another suspected money launderer linked to
the raid, was shot and killed by three men on his yacht off Corfu, and
two years later Solly Nahome, a Hatton Garden jeweller said to have
handled the stolen gold, was found dead outside his home in Finchley
with four bullets in his head. (left - right) Nick Whiting, Charlie Wilson and Donald Urquhart
Then in 2001 Brian Perry, who served a jail sentence for handling the
gold, was shot in the head. George Francis, said to have been another
member of the gang, was also shot dead the same year.
Around half of the stolen gold remains unaccounted for.
Palmer had been facing trial over another alleged timeshare con at the time of his death.
He had been charged with fraud, firearm possession and money laundering
after an eight-year investigation in Tenerife, where he had his second
home.
Days before his death he had been told he could
be facing a 15-year prison sentence, and nine others were also facing
charges, including his girlfriend Christine Ketley and nephews Andrew
Palmer and Dean Morris. (Clockwise from top left) Solly Nahome, Brian Perry and George Francis and Kenneth Noye
DCI Simon Werrett, from Essex Police, who is leading the investigation, has called for the public's help.
He said: "My team would like to speak to anybody who was around Sandpit
Lane between 4pm and 6pm on Wednesday June 24. The area is rural but is
often used by dog walkers and joggers.
"Did you see any people or suspicious vehicles in the area? Did you witness anything out of the ordinary?
"Officers are at the scene making enquiries and I would urge anyone with information, no matter how small, to come forward."
Paintings stolen decades ago returning to Amsterdam Museum
Posted on by Janene Van Jaarsve A harp player - by Charles van Beveren (Picture: Facebook/Amsterdam Museum)
Five paintings that were stolen from n outside depot of the Amsterdam
Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in 1972 have been found at a British
auction, the museum announced in a press release on Wednesday. The
paintings have been returned to the Amsterdam collection.
“We are overjoyed that these works have returned to the Amsterdam
museum after 43 years.” Paul Spies, director of the Amsterdam Museum,
said. “It is unique that works are recovered after such a long time. We
are therefore grateful to anyone who played a role in this for their
help.”
A total of 49 paintings were stolen from the depot in 1972. 31 of
these were traced over the years. The five 19th century paintings that
were found now are A harp player by Belgian painter Charles van Beveren, Flute player with sheep by Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer, The Death of General Hans Willemvan Aylva painted by Chales Rochussen, The resting model by French-Polish artist Emile Eisman Semenowsky and A sitting page with a dog by Belgian artist Florent Willems.
The paintings were surfaced in an auction house in Lewes, Britain,
While checking the origin of the paintings, the auctioneer discovered
that the works were listed in the Art Loss Register – the international
database for missing art and antiques. According to the museum, the
owner who had given the works up for auction had no idea that they were
stolen.
The resting model – by Emile Eisman Semenowsky (Picture: Facebook/Amsterdam Museum)
A sitting page with a dog – by Florent Willems (Picture: Facebook/Amsterdam Museum)
Flute player with sheep – by Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer (Picture: Facebook/Amsterdam Museum)
Death of General Hans Willem van Aylva – by Charles Rochussen (Picture: Facebook/Amsterdam Museum)
quotenet.nl / News / Ex-business partners-hunt-on-capital-of-art dealer Michel-of-Rhine 156 810
