FBI provides new information regarding the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist

BOSTON (AFP).- The FBI said Monday that they finally know who conducted a daring art heist in Boston exactly 23 years ago -- but the thieves can no longer be prosecuted. For two decades, the 1990 theft of 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including rare paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer, has been one of America's greatest unsolved crimes. Now, says the FBI's Boston chief Richard DesLauriers, agents "confirmed the identity of those who entered the museum and others associated with the theft." At a news conference, he touted "significant investigative progress." But there are two big hitches. First, the thieves who hit the museum dressed as Boston police officers essentially got away with it -- because the robbery "occurred 23 years ago, the statute of limitations has run" out, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz told reporters. The prosecutor said the only likely prosecutions were over "criminal liability for anyone in possession." In addition, the FBI still doesn't know where the masterpieces are hidden. DesLauriers said it was clear now for the first time that the art had been stolen by "a criminal organization with a base in the mid-Atlantic states and New England" and about a decade ago was brought, in part, to Philadelphia. "We do not know where the art is currently located," he said, describing the paintings' fate as having been "secreted, unseen and unappreciated." Officials said they wanted to spread news about the unclaimed $5 million reward for information leading to the paintings' recovery and to appeal for tips. Ortiz also put out another piece of bait: immunity from prosecution. There is "potential for immunity to anyone connected," she said, adding that there was no guarantee of "blanket immunity without knowing the specifics." The apparent progress in one of history's greatest art thefts, also including works by Manet and Renoir, comes exactly 23 years since the thieves conned their way into the museum after hours. Once in, they tied up the two guards and "roamed the galleries," according to the account from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Only the next morning when the new shift arrived were the bound guards -- and the robbery -- discovered. © 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse
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Seven paintings stolen during World War II returned to heirs in emotional Paris ceremony

PARIS (AFP).- Six paintings that fell into the hands of the Nazis after their Jewish industrialist owner was forced to sell in order to flee occupied Paris in 1941 were on Tuesday returned to his grandson. In an emotional ceremony at the French culture ministry in Paris, Thomas Selldorff, 84, from near Boston said he was "very happy" to accept the 18th century German and Italian works which he last saw at his grandfather's Vienna home as a small child. They were sold to raise funds for Richard Neumann's passage from Paris to Spain and Cuba. "It's a great day for me. I have three children... and the paintings are going to stay in the family, in our respective homes," a visibly moved Selldorff said, speaking in French. A seventh painting, "The Stop" by Dutch painter Pieter-Jansz van Asch (1603-1678) confiscated by the Nazis from Prague banker Josef Wiener, was also handed over. A lawyer accepted the painting on behalf of the son of a friend of Wiener's wife. Wiener perished in the holocaust. Selldorff's grandfather owned over 200 works of art before the war. But he was forced to leave part of his collection behind when he fled Austria when it was annexed by the Nazis in 1938, and later sold others in Paris. The Nazis had planned to transfer the paintings to a museum that Adolf Hitler envisaged opening in the Austrian town of Linz. After the end of the war, however, they were placed in museums around France, three of them in the Louvre. On Monday, France vowed to step up efforts to return works of art stolen from Jews by the Nazis to the families of their rightful owners. An estimated 2,000 works of art are currently held in trust by France's state museums pending identification of their owners. Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti said France would be taking a more active approach to identifying the rightful owners. "Until now we have waited for inheritors or relatives to trigger research procedures," Filippetti said. "I want to introduce a more proactive approach under which France will seek the owners whether or not a formal request has been made."
© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse

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Serbian police find Rembrandt stolen in 2006, painting already been stolen 10 years earlier

BELGRADE (AFP).- Serbian police have recovered a painting by 17th-century Dutch master Rembrandt that was stolen in 2006, and arrested four people, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Rembrandt's "Portrait of the Father" was found on Monday during a police operation in Sremska Mitrovica, some 50 kilometres (31 miles) west of Belgrade, the spokeswoman told AFP. It was stolen from a museum in the northern town of Novi Sad, 70 kilometres from the capital, with three other works. Four people were arrested during the operation, the spokeswoman said. The painting, which the museum estimated was worth 2.5 million pounds (2.8 million euros, $3.7 million), was stolen in January 2006. It had already been stolen 10 years earlier but was recovered in Spain. The work is 28 x 22.5 centimetres (11 x nine inches) in size and was painted around 1630. The other paintings stolen from the Novi Sad City Museum in 2006 were a Rubens, a piece by Francesco Mola from the 17th century, and another by an unknown German-Dutch artist from the 16th century. At the time police said that two masked and armed robbers broke into the museum and tied up two employees on duty before making off with the paintings. None of the other works has been recovered. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, who lived from 1606 to 1669, is considered one of Europe's greatest Baroque painters and his country's most important.
© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse
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Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses to return disputed Jewish archive to United States

MOSCOW (AFP).- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday he refused to return a historic but disputed Jewish archive to the United States because doing so would "open a Pandora's box". He spoke after a US judge slapped a daily fine of $50,000 (37,500 euros) on Moscow last month for its failure to comply with a 2010 order to return the sacred texts. Putin's international cultural cooperation representative Mikhail Shvydko said at the time that the ruling "doomed" the chances of the archive ever being sent to the United States. Speaking at a Moscow meeting on inter-ethnic issues, Putin called the ruling "unjust" and proposed instead to display the collection in Moscow. "If we open a Pandora's box today and begin to grant such claims, then there won't be an end to such requests and it is unclear what they will lead to," he said in televised remarks. "Maybe one day we will be able to do so but in my opinion, right now we are simply absolutely not ready for it. It is not possible." He suggested the texts be displayed at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre, which opened in November and is one of the world's largest Jewish museums. The archive -- referred to in Russia as the Schneersohn Library in honour of its original owner Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn -- was split up and partially nationalised by the Soviet Union in 1918. The other part was taken out of Russia and ended up in Germany where it was seized by Soviet troops at the end of World War II in 1945. Most of the 12,000 texts and 50,000 documents it contains have since been transferred to the Russian military archive and state library. Officials there said last month that they had no intention of parting with a collection gathered in the 18th century and regarded with veneration by Hasidic Jews who populated eastern Europe and have since largely settled in New York. The dispute has frozen cultural exchange programmes between the two old Cold War rivals and as a result, touring exhibitions of such great museums as the Hermitage and the Tretyakov have bypassed the United States. The US State Department has argued that decisions of the kind issued by the District Court complicated both the case and bilateral ties. Since Putin's return to the Kremlin for a third term in May, Russia and the United States have been at odds over a growing number of issues.
© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse

Man arrested in New York Dali heist

NEW YORK (AFP).- US authorities said Tuesday they have arrested a Greek man for making off with a Salvador Dali watercolor and ink painting worth about $150,000 from a New York private art gallery in June. Phivos Istavrioglou, 29, was arrested Saturday at JFK international airport in a sting that lured him to the United States from Italy, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced. "After surveillance images of a suspect were released to the public, the drawing ... was anonymously mailed back to the gallery from Greece. "A subsequent investigation led to the arrest and indictment of the defendant, who is charged in New York State Supreme Court with Grand Larceny in the Second Degree," Vance said in a statement. Famously mustachioed Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali's 1949 "Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio" was on display as part of the Venus Over Manhattan gallery's debut exhibition, which opened in May. Surveillance video showed the suspect, wearing a black and white shirt and jeans, casually walking out of the Upper East Side art gallery with the painting sticking out of a shopping bag.
© 1994-2013 Agence France-Presse

Romanians arrested over Dutch art heist claim innocence; court denied the suspects bail

BUCHAREST (AFP).- Three Romanians arrested last week in connection with the theft of seven masterpieces from a Rotterdam museum, including works by Monet and Picasso, claimed their innocence in court Friday. The men, charged with conspiracy and aggravated theft, have been linked to at least two of the artworks -- a Matisse and a Gauguin -- which they allegedly tried to sell in Romania. Their defense lawyers told the court during a bail hearing Friday that they were innocent even though one of them twice visited the museum where the seven masterpieces, estimated at between 100 and 200 million euros ($135 million and $270 million), were stolen. However, the court denied the suspects bail. Eugen Darie, dressed in sweatpants and anorak, told the court he visited Rotterdam Kunsthall museum at around the time of the theft last October but never laid eyes on the stolen paintings he and his co-defendants allegedly tried to sell. "I didn't see the paintings," he said. "I only looked at bronze statues. I am innocent." Fellow suspect Radu Dogaru also told the court he had nothing to do with the heist, one of the most spectacular in the art world in the last 20 years, even though prosecutors says he was present when two of the works were offered to a Romanian businessman in the presence of an art expert. Mihai Alexandru Bitu, the third suspect, also denied involvement. His lawyer, Daniela Dede, told AFP that her client "just received a call from his co-defendant Dogaru who asked him to find a buyer for some objects. He didn't know it was these paintings." The suspects, all in their 20s, have been detained for questioning since their arrest on January 22. Under Romanian law, they can be held for 29 days. All three of them have been under investigation for violent offences in the past. Romania's police chief Petre Toba said Thursday that investigators had evidence leading them to believe that several other people had taken part in the theft. A person from Moldova is said to have been present when the paintings were offered for sale, one of the defence lawyer told AFP. Investigators also believe that an Albanian man investigated for murder in Romania may have helped the suspects in The Netherlands, sources close from the investigation told Mediafax news agency. The heist gripped the Netherlands and the art world as police apparently struggled to piece the crime together, despite putting 25 officers on the case. Dutch police released grainy security camera footage of the theft, which took place around 3:00 am. The footage showed two apparently young males entering and leaving the museum in central Rotterdam within barely 90 seconds. The works stolen include Picasso's "Tete d'Arlequin", Monet's "Waterloo Bridge" and Lucian Freud's "Woman with Eyes Closed".

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Stolen Matisse turns up in Britain; to be returned to Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm

LONDON (AFP).- A Matisse painting stolen 25 years ago from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm has turned up in Britain, where a dealer had hoped to sell it on behalf of an elderly Polish client, it emerged on Monday. Henri Matisse's "Le Jardin", an oil on canvas from 1920 which is now worth about $1 million (760,000 euros), was found when art dealer Charles Roberts ran it through a global database of stolen art -- standard practice before a sale. The team at the Art Loss Register quickly identified the painting as the one stolen from the Swedish museum on May 11, 1987, when a burglar broke in with a sledgehammer and made off with the artwork in the early hours of the morning. Several attempts were made to ransom the painting or sell it back to the museum for a huge sum, according to reports at the time, but the museum refused, and the trail went cold -- until last month. Within a few days of matching the Matisse with the stolen painting on the database, a specialist had taken possession of the work and put it in his safe, where it is now awaiting delivery to the Swedish museum. Roberts, who runs Charles Fine Art in Essex, east of London, said he had been asked to sell the painting by an elderly man in Poland who had owned it since the 1990s and now wanted to raise money for his grandchildren. Given that the dealer did not know who owned the Matisse before that, Roberts ran it through the Art Loss Register to check its provenance. "I didn't anticipate hearing that it had been stolen. It came as quite a shock to find that out," Roberts told AFP. "It would have been good all round, but unfortunately it wasn't to be. As soon as I was informed of its status there was no question about doing anything but returning it." The Polish man had bought it "in good faith", Roberts said, and when he told him it was stolen and could not be sold, the man "was bewildered, taken aback, although he did say, 'So it definitely is a real one?'" The director of the Swedish museum at the time of the theft had told reporters that the painting was too well-known to sell on the open market, and this is likely why it had been missing for so long. Christopher A. Marinello, the art recovery specialist and lawyer who has locked the work in his safe, said: "Stolen artwork has no real value in the legitimate marketplace and will eventually resurface.... It's just a matter of waiting it out."

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