Man charged with 'Picasso' art attack in London: police

Bust Of A Woman was ripped while on display at the central London gallery www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7840393/Vandal-attacks-20m-Picasso-painting-Tate-Modern-man-20-charged-criminal-damage.html

LONDON (AFP).- Police in London on Tuesday said a man was charged with criminal damage after reports of an attack on a Picasso painting at the Tate Modern art gallery.

The Metropolitan Police said a 20-year-old man from northwest London appeared in court on Monday and was remanded in custody until another hearing on January 30. No other details were released, other than the incident happened on Saturday.

The gallery also did not specify the work in question but said the suspect was "swiftly apprehended" and that conservation experts were assessing the artwork.

British media identified the work as Picasso's "Bust of a Woman", an oil painting depicting the artist's lover Dora Maar. He painted it in Paris in 1944 during the final days of the Nazi occupation.

The Daily Telegraph said the painting was torn but there was no immediate confirmation.

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France to return Benin artworks by 2021: minister

French Culture Minister Franck Riester (L) speaks with Benin President Patrice Talon during a meeting on December 16, 2019 in Cotonou. Yanick Folly / AFP.

COTONOU (AFP).- France will return artworks taken from Benin during the colonial conquest of the region by the start of 2021, culture minister Franck Riester said Monday on a visit to the West African country.

President Emmanuel Macron pledged last year to hand back 26 artefacts "without delay" in a landmark decision that has piled pressure on other former colonial powers to restore looted artworks to their countries of origin.

The pieces -- including a royal throne -- were seized by French troops over a century ago and have been housed at the Quai Branly museum in Paris.

Riester said the artworks would be returned "in the course of 2020, perhaps at the beginning of 2021" as he met with Benin's president Patrice Talon in Cotonou. Benin has welcomed France's decision to return the objects, but has warned against doing so too quickly as it works to build a proper facility to showcase the heritage.

Benin's culture minister Jean-Michel Abimbola told a joint press conference that the two countries had agreed that the artworks would be handed back "in several stages". He welcomed "the commitment of the French President to return these works" and "the opening of a broader discussion" concerning other artefacts.

The Kingdom of Dahomey -- in what became modern-day Benin -- reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries and became a major source of slaves for European traders before conquest by Paris in the 1890s ended its rule.

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The US Treasury Department Sanctioned Dealer Nazem Ahmed for Allegedly Using His Gallery to Fund a Terrorist Group

The Lebanese collector, fond of works by Warhol and Picasso, is under fire from the Treasury Department.

Nazem Said Ahmad in his Beirut apartment. Image via the US Treasury Department.

In a press release issued Friday by the Department of the Treasury, the US government announced sanctions on diamond dealer and prominent art collector Nazem Said Ahmad, in an effort to fight money-laundering that supports Hezbollah—the Lebanon-based political faction categorized as a terrorist movement by American officials.

The government’s statement asserts that Ahmad, whose links to Hezbollah date as far back as 2001, established the Artual Gallery in Beirut as a front to “launder substantial amounts of money bound for the terrorist group,” for which he is a “significant financier,” having at one point even “personally” provided funds to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

Despite his alleged role adjacent to a designated terrorist organization, the businessman has also managed to carve out a second reputation for himself: that of a notable art collector for nearly 30 years, whose collection includes works by Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, and Jean-Michel Basquiat (with the full bounty worth, per the Treasury, “tens of millions of dollars”).

A profile of Ahmad published earlier this year (and later removed) by the online magazine Selections Arts included an exhaustive list of big-name contemporary artists whose work he proudly owns, including the likes of Antony Gormley, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Richter, Yayoi Kusama, Lucio Fontana, and Ai Weiwei. During the interview, he reflected upon his first-ever purchase: a work on paper by Pablo Picasso, which he bought in the early 1990s.

According to officials, in addition to using his gallery to conceal money-laundering, Ahmad also used his extensive collection to advance his illicit activities by storing “some of his personal funds in high-value art in a pre-emptive attempt to mitigate the effects of U.S. sanctions.”

Ahmad has officially been considered a “major Hezbollah financial donor” by US agents since late 2016, with the sanctions coming as a result of years-long investigations conducted in collaboration with Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The move is part of the Trump administration’s ongoing fight against terrorist financing, with Friday’s statement also naming another man, Saleh Assi, as the subject of sanctions. “This Administration will continue to take action against Hizballah financiers like Nazem Said Ahmad and Saleh Assi,” said Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in a statement, using the alternate spelling of the group’s name, “who have used money laundering and tax evasion schemes to fund terrorist plots and finance their own lavish lifestyles as the Lebanese people suffer.”

Deputy Secretary Justin G. Muzinich also added a comment directed specifically towards “art and luxury goods dealers,” warning them to “be on alert to the schemes” crafted by criminals such as Ahmad.

Artnet News did not receive a response to a request for comment from Ahmad via the Artual Gallery. However, Ahmad is apparently still active on social media: Earlier today, he uploaded three posts to his Instagram account, two of which are portraits of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Caroline Elbaor, December 16, 2019
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Stolen 'Klimt' found hidden in a wall will take a month to authenticate, officials say

Gustav Klimt's Portrait of a Lady (1916-17)

Gardener discovered the painting behind a metal plate on an exterior wall at Italy's Ricci Oddi gallery

A Gustav Klimt masterpiece stolen 22 years ago from an Italian gallery appears to have been discovered hidden within the institution walls, officials say. Portrait of a Lady was taken on 22 February 1997 from the Ricci Oddi gallery in the northern city of Piacenza. A gardener found the painting earlier this week, after removing a metal plate on an exterior wall. The work was concealed in a bag buried within a cavity.

The painting will take up to a month to authenticate, the gallery vice president Laura Bonfanti tells The Art Newspaper. Massimo Ferrari, the gallery director, told the BBC that the stamps on the back of the canvas are original and linked to the Klimt piece. Bonfanti adds that an inventory number also needs to be checked.

Asked if the gallery had received an insurance payout for the work, Bonfanti says: “I don’t know at this point. We’d need to check the documents from 22 years ago.” The work is in very good condition as it has not been outside, she adds. “We don’t know anything about how it was put there [in the hidden recess]”.

Reports speculate that the thieves deposited the work in the wall after using a fishing line to hook and remove the Klimt from display (the frame was found on the gallery roof after the theft).

Jonathan Papamerenghi, a member of the Piacenza council responsible for arts and culture, told local press: “If the findings confirm the authenticity of the painting, it would be a sensational discovery and we would be ready to exhibit it in the gallery as early as January. We are talking about the most sought after stolen painting in the world after Caravaggio’s Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence.”

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/amp/news/missing-klimt-turns-up-in-hidden-wall-cavity-in-good-condition?__twitter_impression=true

Gareth Harris 12th December 2019 11:31 GMT

German police offer half a million euro reward for stolen jewels

Passers-by and journalists stand in front of the cordoned off Royal Palace that houses the historic Green Vault (Gruenes Goelbe) in Dresden, eastern Germany on November 25, 2019, after it was broken into. A state museum in Dresden containing billions of euros worth of baroque treasures has been robbed, police in Germany confirmed on November 25, 2019. The Green Vault at Dresden's Royal Palace, which is home to around 4000 precious objects made of ivory, gold, silver and jewels, was reportedly broken into at 5am on early morning. Sebastian Kahnert / dpa / AFP.

BERLIN (AFP).- Investigators in Germany on Thursday offered a half-a-million-euro reward for information about the spectacular heist in which robbers snatched priceless diamonds from a state museum in Dresden.

Police said the reward ($550,000) was being offered to anyone providing information "which could lead... to the capture of the perpetrators or the recovery of the stolen items".

Police across eastern Germany are continuing their search for the thieves who launched a brazen raid on the Green Vault museum in Dresden's Royal Palace on Monday.

Having initiated a partial power cut and broken in through a window, the thieves stole priceless 18th-century jewellery from the collection of the Saxon ruler August the Strong. They stole objects encrusted with hundreds of diamonds, including the famous 49-carat Dresden white, the museum said on Wednesday.

Police are hunting four suspects in the theft and have released dramatic CCTV footage which showed one of them breaking into a display case with an axe. Aside from a burnt out car that they identified as the initial escape vehicle, investigators are yet to find a significant trace of the thieves.

Dresden police said they were also in contact with colleagues in Berlin to explore possible connections to a similar heist in the capital two years ago.

In 2017, a 100-kilogramme (220-pound), 24-karat giant gold coin was stolen from Berlin's Bode Museum. Four men with links to a notorious Berlin gang were later arrested and put on trial.

On Thursday, police said the Dresden investigations were now being led by the state prosecutor's department for organised crime. The special commission set up to investigate the theft has also doubled in size to involve a staff of 40.

"We will leave no stone unturned to solve this case," said regional police president Horst Kretzschmar.

Picture taken on April 9, 2019 shows one of the rooms in the Green Vault (Gruenes Gewoelbe) at the Royal Palace in Dresden, eastern Germany. Sebastian Kahnert / dpa / AFP.

https://artdaily.cc/news/118798/German-police-offer-half-a-million-euro-reward-for-stolen-jewels#.XeFM6uhKiUk
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French court confirms sentence for Picasso's electrician over hoarded art

In this file photo Claude Picasso, son of late Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, waits before for the appeal trial of Pierre Le Guennec (not pictured), accused of receiving stolen goods after being found in possession of paintings by Picasso, at the court in Aix-en-Provence, southeastern France on October 31, 2016. BORIS HORVAT / AFP.

LYON (AFP).- A French court on Tuesday confirmed the two-year suspended jail terms given to Pablo Picasso's former electrician and his wife, who hoarded 271 of the great painter's works in a garage for four decades. The verdict by the Lyon court is the latest twist in a decade-long legal saga, which took the couple, who claim the works were a gift, all the way to France's top appeals court.

Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec were first given two-year suspended terms in 2015 after being convicted of possession of stolen goods over the huge trove of works by Picasso, including nine rare Cubist collages and a work from his famous Blue Period. That verdict was upheld in 2016 by a higher court but then quashed by the Cour de Cassation, which ordered a retrial.

The former electrician, 80, and his wife, 76, were not in court Tuesday when they were found guilty for a third time.

"It is a triumph of truth and marks the end of a cover-up", said Jean-Jacques Neuer, lawyer for Picasso's son Claude Ruiz-Picasso. He accused Pierre Le Guennec of playing for art dealers "the role that drug mules play in drug-trafficking", alleging that rich art dealers had sought to exploit the couple. The Le Guennecs have always denied stealing the works.

At his original trial Pierre Le Guennec claimed that Picasso had presented him with the artworks towards the end of his life to reward him for his loyal service. But he later changed his account, telling an appeal court that the works were part of a huge collection that Picasso's widow Jacqueline asked him to conceal after the artist's death in 1973.

Le Guennec said he stored more than a dozen garbage bags of unsigned works which Jacqueline later retrieved, except for one bag which she left him saying: "Keep this, it's for you." The affair came to light when Pierre Le Guennec attempted to get the works authenticated by Claude Ruiz-Picasso in 2010. The artist's heirs promptly filed a complaint against him, triggering an investigation.

Commenting on the latest ruling, Neuer said: "If you have 271 works by Picasso and you want to put them on the international market you need a certificate of authenticity. "If you see the Picasso estate and tell them these works fell from the sky or you picked them up from the bric-a-brac market, there is little chance anyone will believe you."

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European police bust gang looting artifacts in Italy

The gang used bulldozers and metal detectors to loot objects as old as 400 BC from the Calabria region -- the "toe" of Italy -- before selling them across Europe. Photo: Europol.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- European police have busted an international crime gang involved in trafficking tens of thousands of Greek archaeological artefacts looted from illegal excavations in Italy, law enforcement agencies said Monday.

Police from Italy, Britain, France, Germany and Serbia arrested 23 suspects and carried out 103 searches in the investigation that started in 2017, the EU police agency Europol and Eurojust said. The gang used bulldozers and metal detectors to loot objects as old as 400 BC from the Calabria region -- the "toe" of Italy -- before selling them across Europe.

"Illegal excavations were managed by a well-structured organised crime group... led by two Calabrians" living in the southern province of Crotone, the agencies said in a combined statement. In Calabria "the cultural heritage includes important traces from the Greek and Roman period", Europol said.

Italian media said two Calabrian men aged 59 and 30 were arrested. The gang also included "fences, intermediaries and mules operating out of different Italian regions" with the looted artefacts then going through contacts in Dijon, Munich, London and Vrsac in northeastern Serbia.

Some of the stolen objects is said to date as far back as the fourth and third centuries B.C. and include five terracotta vases and oil lamps, plates depicting animal scenes, brooches and various jewels, Italian media reports said.

The looters used bulldozers to dig craters, before sifting through the earth and passing it through metal detectors, the reports added, quoting police sources. "The looting carried out over the course of several years caused considerable damage to Italian cultural heritage," Europol and Eurojust added. Coordination between the two agencies enabled "arrests, searches and seizures immediately and simultaneously in the five countries," they added.

Italian and Swiss police in 2016 recovered a haul of archaeological artefacts stolen from Italy and stored by a notorious British antiquities dealer. The haul, worth nine million euros ($10 million), was discovered in 2014 in a storage unit at the Geneva Freeport rented by Britain's disgraced Robin Symes, a giant in the illegal antiquities trade with ties to Italian tomb raiders.

At the time it was regarded as one of the most important recoveries of the last few decades.

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