[CPProt.net] With Thousands of Items Reported Stolen, Art Theft Is Big Business. The FBI estimates the value of the works at $5billion annually. Big, isolated estates are an easy target, along with many smaller museums.

[Museum Security and Cultural Property Protection (Ton Cremers)]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-ft-art2jan02,1,3223822.story?coll=la-head
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>From the Los Angeles Times
GOBAL REPORT
With Thousands of Items Reported Stolen, Art Theft Is Big Business
The FBI estimates the value of the works at $5billion annually. Big,
isolated estates are an easy target, along with many smaller museums.
By Rhymer Rigby
Financial Times

January 2, 2006

LONDON - As the Henry Moore Foundation discovered last month, two-ton
sculptures really do get stolen.

The robbery of Moore's "Reclining Figure" - a 2-meter-high bronze
masterpiece taken at night from the foundation in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire
- was audacious by any standards, yet hardly the work of a suave master
thief. 

Experts believe that it most likely was taken by a notorious gang of
travelers that specializes in burgling country houses.

Moore's figure may shortly be reclining in a more permanent state of repose:
It is feared that the sculpture may be melted down for scrap, turning a work
valued at 3 million pounds (about $5.2 million) into a lump of bronze worth
5,000 pounds. The best hope is that someone involved will respond to the
100,000-pound reward the foundation is offering for information leading to
its recovery.

Art theft is big business. Interpol reckons that it ranks fourth among the
highest-value criminal activities, after drugs, arms smuggling and money
laundering. The FBI puts its value at $5 billion a year. 

"We have 160,000 items listed as lost, stolen, looted or missing," said
Sarah Jackson of the Art Loss Register, an international database of missing
artworks. "We start at 2,000 pounds, but some of them, like Leonardo's
'Madonna with the Yarnwinder,' are worth tens of millions."

Although the Da Vinci painting, stolen from Drumlanrig Castle in Scotland in
2003, was a well-planned robbery, it highlights a popular misconception:
that high-value items are stolen to order. 

"It's very unlikely," Jackson said. "There are maybe one or two cases a
year. The majority of art is stolen to fund other criminal activities."

Vernon Rapley, a detective in the art and antiques unit of London's
Metropolitan Police, agrees that the crime lord with an aesthetic streak is
a figment of the public imagination. Indeed, even crazed collectors are
rare. The only recent example is Stephane Breutweiser, a Frenchman who stole
172 artifacts from museums across Europe. On his arrest in 2002, his mother
destroyed about $1.7 billion worth of art he had amassed.

Art may be stolen from all sorts of places: museums, private homes and even
corporate collections, though examples of the latter are rare as business
premises are typically well protected with 24-hour security. But as the
Henry Moore theft and others have shown, large private houses, particularly
in the country, are an easy target, along with many smaller museums.

"You get professional thieves who steal a lot of stuff in transit," Rapley
said. 

It is more or less impossible to sell a stolen work from the A-list of
artists without instantly alerting experts to its identity. "With very
high-level property," Rapley said, "the majority is stolen with buy-back
ransom in mind, usually 1 million pounds - a nice easy pay day."

This is why, he continues, the police often treat this kind of crime more
like kidnap than theft. The physical safety of the object is paramount.

As with kidnappings, the police never pay ransoms (although private
individuals may). But a stolen masterpiece has other uses. Criminal gangs
sometimes use them as surety in deals: a drug dealer might give a supplier a
$5-million painting in return for a batch of cocaine. When the dealer has
sold the cocaine, the supplier is paid and the painting returned.

As a token of value, famous paintings can be a useful way for criminals to
move money about. 

"One of the easiest ways to transfer value across international borders is
to roll up a painting in a tube," said Rapley. "If you're caught, unless
it's very well known, you'll probably be able to convince customs officials
that you bought it at an antiques market." The same cannot be said for a
suitcase full of cash or white powder.

Yet even second-tier artifacts will be listed on databases, making them
harder to sell. They are very unlikely to pass through big auction houses,
says an official at Sotheby's, because the larger houses conduct thorough
checks on provenance. But there will always be dealers and auctioneers less
diligent in their approach.

Even when checks are carried out, though, identifying stolen works may not
be easy. A pair of Georgian candlesticks worth $35,000 may be unique but
they are unlikely to be as recognizable as, say, a Canaletto.

A thief in need of a quick return may prefer to realize the value of the
materials in an artwork rather than risk selling the item. A gold box worth
$17,000 could be worth $850 melted down; similarly jewelry can be broken up
and diamonds recut. 

Overall, says Radley, the recovery rate for stolen art is about 11% a year. 

http://www.latimes.com/