From time to time, shocking news spreads to the art world when criminals steal priceless treasures from museums. As recently as a year ago, there was a daring robbery of the Rotterdam Künsthal Museum. The intruders managed to take out seven paintings by outstanding artists. And recently the story was continued, and quite scary …
THE PERFECT LOVE
It took the robbers only 90 seconds to ransack a museum in the Netherlands. It all happened like in a famously swirled Hollywood blockbuster. At three o'clock in the morning, thieves entered the museum through the emergency entrance, cut the wiring and rushed into the halls for paintings. The alarm went off, and after five minutes the police were on the spot, but this time was enough for the criminals to remove the paintings from the walls and hide.
The robbery of the Künsthal exhibition center has become the largest in Holland in the last twenty years. The museum has lost priceless masterpieces of painting, such as "The Head of the Harlequin" by Pablo Picasso, "The Reading Girl" by Henri Matisse, "Waterloo Bridge" and "Charing Cross Bridge" by Claude Monet, "Woman in Front of an Open Window" by Paul Gauguin, "Self-portrait" by Meyer de Hannah and "Woman with Closed Eyes" by Lucian Freud. According to experts, the stolen paintings are worth two hundred million euros.
Woman with closed eyes. Lucian Freud.
Woman in front of an open window. Paul Gauguin.
Reading girl in white and yellow. Henri Matisse.
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Self-portrait. Meyer de Hahn.
But how did the criminals decide to rob a museum equipped with the latest technology? It turns out that the calculation was made for this. The security system in the museum is fully automated and controlled from an external center. In the museum itself at night there is not a single employee, therefore, there is no so-called second security circle, which allows to detain intruders who have already entered the building. This allowed the thieves to freely enter the building and then escape before the police arrived.
PAINTINGS AND BANANAS
The Künsthal Museum has no permanent exhibitions, it was conceived as a gallery in which it was planned to exhibit works from private collections. The stolen canvases belonged to the private firm Triton Foundation and were part of a large-scale exhibition dedicated to the gallery's 20th anniversary. The robbers, apparently, were patiently waiting for this particular exhibition to open. The organizers announced that the exhibition will feature 150 works, including the unique creations of Salvador Dali, Vincent Van Gogh, Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Cezanne and Andy Warhol. A rare chance to get rich from works of art! Apparently, the criminals did a good job of studying the museum's security system and came to the conclusion that they could easily outwit it. As demonstrated with brilliance.
The Dutch police were seriously challenged. It was necessary to prove to the whole world that they are knowingly eating their bread. The first version emerged about the involvement of malefactors in the drug trade. In particular, the theft was linked to the discovery of a consignment of bananas with cocaine in the Netherlands. According to law enforcement agencies, the stolen paintings could have been used for settlements between drug dealers. The containers with bananas and cocaine hidden among them were confiscated four days before the robbery of the museum as a result of a joint operation of the Belgian and Dutch police. The cargo was found in the port of Antwerp on board a ship carrying a consignment of bananas from Ecuador. In an official statement, police officer Kremers noted that "in 20 years in this job" he "saw more than one confirmation that drugs and works of art are transported through the same channels."But later it turned out that the police had gone on the wrong track. In the meantime, the guards were not digging there, the criminals managed to take the paintings out of the country.
ROMANIAN TRACE
The fate of stolen works of art usually develops according to one of three possible scenarios: the black market, private collections, or complete destruction if no one dares to buy them. Knowledgeable people say that it is impossible to sell well-known canvases in Europe or the United States at once, first they need to be shipped to the countries of the Persian Gulf. There are closed online auctions for their own. In principle, the art world is rather small, and lovers of beauty know each other well. Solvent collectors are not the last people in this world. True, there is a small group of art lovers who, after buying a treasure, hide it in some bunker or safe and admire it all alone. Sometimes even the closest people from their environment do not know what is hidden behind the thick walls of a safe or a secret room. If masterpieces fall into such hands, the chance of returning them to their rightful owner is negligible. Pictures or jewelry can "settle" in such a house for a long time.
Police officers from the Netherlands did a tremendous job before they got on the trail of criminals. Suspicions fell on a certain Romanian Petre Kondrat, who was previously involved in the sale of stolen works of art. To remove suspicion from himself, he admitted that he had seen two stolen paintings in his homeland in Romania. According to the lawyer of the accused, they tried to involve his client in mediation in the sale of the ill-fated paintings. “My client saw two paintings when one person offered to sell them to a potential buyer - Constantin Dinescu, the owner of an art gallery in Bucharest,” his lawyer said. According to him, the meeting took place at Dinescu's house in the presence of an art critic, Kondrat and a seller of paintings. Earlier, another person involved in the case, his childhood friend Radu Dogaru, allegedly turned to Kondrat with a request to find a buyer for the paintings of Matisse and Gauguin,without specifying that they are stolen. This is how the path led the police to Romania.
The Pyro
In early 2013, three Romanians were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the theft of paintings in Bucharest. At the same time, the Romanian police said only that "they carried out operations in connection with the theft of paintings in the Netherlands." The law enforcement bodies refused to provide any more detailed information. For its part, the Netherlands demanded that Romania extradite the three arrested persons, and Mihai Bitu, Eugen Darie and Radu Dogaru, placed under preliminary arrest for 30 days, were transported to Rembrandt's homeland. After several months of searching, the Dutch police announced the arrest of another participant in the robbery. She turned out to be a 19-year-old Romanian woman, who, according to the investigation, helped thieves hide paintings stolen from an art gallery. But, despite the fact that the police reported the capture of the alleged perpetrators of the crime,the location of the masterpieces for a long time remained a secret behind seven seals.
At this time, a real drama was unfolding in the Romanian village of Caracliu. For the time being, the paintings were in the house of one of the three suspects - Radu Dogar. After the first arrests, his mother Olga Dogar put the canvases in a suitcase and buried them in the cemetery. And when the police began to search the area, they dug up the paintings and burned their houses in the oven. In this way, the woman wanted to destroy the evidence and save her son from prison.
When the details surfaced, the public was horrified. Are priceless masterpieces destroyed in such a barbaric way? It was suggested that Olga Dogar really wants to confuse the investigation, and the paintings at this time lie in some kind of hiding place. A special examination was undertaken to establish the truth. Art lovers held their breath in the hope of a miracle. For several months, experts studied the ash and nails found in the Dogar house. Alas, the published conclusions of the experts were disappointing. Olga Dogar really burned the canvases. Every single one.
Lyubov SHAROVA