[MSN] Stolen masterpieces are 'poisoned chalice'. More than 150, 000 works missing. High-profile paintings often recovered because they are hard for thieves to sell.

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Thursday > September 14 > 2006 
  
Stolen masterpieces are 'poisoned chalice'
More than 150,000 works missing. High-profile paintings often recovered
because they are hard for thieves to sell
  
ANGELA DOLAND and RAPHAEL SATTER 
AP 


Wednesday, September 13, 2006


Together, they would make up a stunning gallery: 167 Renoirs, 166
Rembrandts, 175 Warhols and more than 200 works by Dali.

Experts have estimated that more than 150,000 important pieces of art are
missing - many stolen from private homes, others snatched from museum walls
or pilfered from storerooms.

Only a fraction is ever found: Interpol puts the figure at around 10 per
cent. Yet iconic masterpieces like Edvard Munch's The Scream and Madonna,
recovered last month in Norway, turn up more often, partly because of
intense police work and partly because they are so tough to sell.

Criminals sometimes mastermind a spectacular burglary, then discover nobody
will touch a work of art so famous that any buyer would have to hide it from
view, said Karl-Heinz Kind, an art-theft specialist at Interpol.

Thieves may demand a ransom, or try to sell works at a fraction of their
worth. This is how some thieves trip up: The Italian house painter who stole
the Mona Lisa in a famous 1911 heist was caught two years later - when he
tried to sell it.

After a theft, "the second step is ... to make money out of it," Kind said
in a telephone interview. "And that's the much more difficult part, and I
think very often underestimated by the thief."

Charles Hill, a former Metropolitan Police detective in Britain who
specializes in recovering stolen art, calls stolen masterpieces "a poisoned
chalice."

"Spectacular trophy art robberies are low- or non-earners," he said.

For lesser treasures, the market is lucrative - and vast.

The FBI estimates the market for stolen art at $6 billion U.S. annually. The
Art Loss Register, which maintains the world's largest database on the
subject, has tallied a total of 170,000 pieces of stolen, missing and looted
art and valuables, said staff member Antonia Kimbell.

Interpol has about 30,000 pieces of stolen art in its database. Most art
thefts are ordinary burglaries of private homes, where criminals take
everything of value, including art, Kind said.

In museums, many thefts occur in storerooms, and sometimes go unnoticed for
years until museums do inventory. Often, museum personnel are involved, he
said.

Then, there are the dramatic raids. Kind likes to dispel the myth of art
world criminals like Pierce Brosnan's suave character in the 1999 remake of
The Thomas Crown Affair.

"I would warn against considering art thieves as gentlemen thieves," Kind
said. They are increasingly armed and violent, he said.

One of the biggest art heists of all time took place in the United States.
In 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers walked into the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as the city's St. Patrick's Day celebration
was winding down. They persuaded security guards to unlock the doors of the
gallery and then stole 13 priceless items, including works by Rembrandt,
Vermeer, Degas and Manet.

That heist appears on the FBI's list of the top 10 art thefts. The list is
topped by the looting of Iraqi artifacts following the U.S. invasion in 2003
- an event that galvanized the international community's response to
cultural theft.

The following year, the FBI dedicated 12 agents to a special art crime team.
During its first year in operation, the team recovered more than 100 pieces
worth more than $50 million.

http://www.canada.com/