Six years and eight months in prison for the theft of the Kunsthal
The theft of the Kunsthal Rotterdam
‘Head Clown’, a Picasso painting stolen along with six other boxes six years ago from a museum in the Netherlands, during a spectacular heist, it could have been found in Romania, informed the prosecutor of Bucharest, this Sunday.
Seven masterpieces by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Meyer de Haan, Matisse, and Lucien Freud were stolen from the Museum Kunsthal of Rotterdam in 2012, in a robbery that lasted only three minutes and that the Dutch media called “the theft of the century”.
The prosecutor Augustin Lazar confirmed to Afp that the Romanian authorities had in their possession a box that “could be” one of the stolen from the Museum Kunsthal, and added that should be examined more thoroughly.
experts are now checking whether the canvas is the “Head of Harlequin” by Picasso, ” said a source to the Afp.
A spokesman for the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs said that now “should be established” the authenticity of the box.
Four romanians were jailed for the robbery in 2014, and were asked to pay 18 million euros (20.5 million us dollars at the current exchange rate)to the insurers of the canvases.
One of the members of the group, Olga Dogaru, said the researchers have burned the paintings in her stove in the village of Carcaliu, in eastern Romania, in an attempt to protect her son, Radu, when he could not sell them. More later retracted the statement.
The investigators had previously said that the paintings had been destroyed after the thieves did not find the buyer.
The paintings had been loaned to the museum for an exhibition in the framework of its twentieth anniversary, sponsored by the Foundation Newt, created to take care of the art collection accumulated by the investor, Willem Cordia, who died in 2011.
According to the criteria of
Learn more