Displaying items by tag: robbers

On Wednesday, February 19, three individuals attacked two auctioneers and two assistants with tear gas outside the famous auction house, Hôtel Drouot, in Paris. The assailants made off with a briefcase holding jewels worth at least €300,000. The robbers were picked up by their getaway driver and were unsuccessfully pursued by the police.

Hôtel Drouot, which specializes in fine art, antiques, and antiquities, has been criticized in the past for security issues. In 2010, the auction house’s union of art handlers was charged with the theft and receipt of stolen goods. An investigation was conducted after the scandal and France’s Minister of Justice, Michele Alliot-Marie, commissioned a report that chided Drouot for its “opaque structure” and “minimal governance.”

After the recent incident, Drouot released a public statement stressing their commitment to anti-theft measures.

A 46-year-old German man was arrested by authorities in connection to the devastating art heist that took place in the Netherlands on October 16, 2012. The man was arrested in southwestern Germany for allegedly trying to sell the seven stolen paintings back to the Triton Foundation, the owner of the artworks.

The paintings, which include masterpieces by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Claude Monet (1840-1926), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), were on view at the Kunsthal Museum in the Netherlands and have yet to be recovered. The bounty, which includes Picasso’s Harlequin Head (1971), Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, London and Charing Cross Bridge, London (1901), and Matisse’s Reading Girl in White and Yellow (1919), is believed to be worth between $66 million and $266 million.  

This is the fifth arrest made in connection to the heist; three Romanian men accused of carrying out the heist were arrested on January 22, 2013 and a Romanian woman was arrested on March 4, 2013 on suspicion of assisting the robbers. Officials are working to determine whether the German suspect had ties to the stolen paintings or was simply trying to scam the Triton Foundation. He was arrested on the grounds of suspected blackmail and is currently under investigation.