[CPProt.net] UK: Organised art theft ring smashed

[MSN and CPProt list (Ton Cremers)]

Organised art theft ring smashed
Wed Mar 2, 2005 8:14 PM GMT 

LONDON (Reuters) - British police say they have smashed a multi-million
pound organised art theft ring that has been plundering stately homes and
galleries around the country.

They said two men and a woman had been arrested and half a million pounds
worth of stolen art recovered from the Flogg It auction house in east London
and several other premises.

But art worth some 30 million pounds taken in thefts over the past two years
was still missing.

"We hope that today's action, by dismantling the principal outlet in
southeast England for the laundering of high value stolen goods, will
prevent future losses," police spokesman detective chief inspector David
Thompson said.

He said the recovered items whose owners had been identified included
paintings, silverware, plates and decorative objects.

Asked if the missing and recovered items had been stolen to order or whether
they were simply opportunistic thefts, he replied that it was probably a
mixture of the two.

"It is quite likely that some items were stolen on commission and that these
lesser ones were simply taken in the process," Thompson said.

"There is a lot that we have not recovered and there is a reasonable
assumption that it may have gone abroad. But I am not in a position to
confirm that," he added.

Art theft to order is a world-wide problem involving ancient artefacts to
modern masterpieces -- some of which is known to transit through Britain.

Interpol has on its Web site 415 items stolen recently and only 181 recently
discovered.

Currently the major headache is in stolen artefacts from looting in Iran and
Iraq -- some of which has already turned up in Britain.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/