[MSN] Private investigator arrested over stolen Da Vinci

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Private investigator arrested over stolen Da Vinci 

DAMIEN HENDERSON and MARTIN WILLIAMS 

A PRIVATE investigator was arrested yesterday in connection with a stolen
Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece recovered earlier this month.

Mike Brown, who runs a detective agency in Glasgow, is the fifth person to
be detained in connection with the art theft, described as the UK's biggest.

It follows the recovery of the 500-year-old The Madonna with the Yarnwinder,
which has been valued between £15m and £40m, during a raid on a Glasgow
solicitor's office on October 4 in which four men were arrested. The
Leonardo was taken from Drumlanrig Castle, near Thornhill in Dumfries and
Galloway, in August 2003.

Mr Brown, 45, was arrested by Dumfries and Galloway Police at his home in
the south side of Glasgow and taken to police headquarters in Dumfries. He
is expected to appear at Dumfries Sheriff Court today charged with
conspiracy to rob and extort money.

Mr Brown is the director of Diamond Investigations, which he set up in 1990
and runs from offices in Charing Cross, Glasgow.

The company's website describes a "professional, discrete and completely
confidential service" and says its areas of investigations include
matrimonial inquiries, stock theft, vetting potential employees and employee
sickness fraud. It claims to have banks, local authorities and legal
services among its clients.

In an interview with the Evening Times in 1997, Mr Brown also claimed he
charged between £60 and £100 an hour to act as a "male decoy" in order to
find out if his clients' wives or girlfriends were prepared to have an
affair.

There was no reply at the offices of Diamond Investigations when The Herald
called yesterday afternoon.

At his high-security gated home in Haggs Road, Pollokshaws, where Mr Brown
is understood to have been arrested, a woman believed to be a relative said
she "knew nothing" of what had happened to him before refusing to comment
any further.

A police spokesman said: "Officers from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary
arrested a further fifth man in relation to the ongoing Madonna with the
Yarnwinder investigation. The 45-year-old man from the Glasgow area will be
appearing at Dumfries Sheriff Court tomorrow in connection with this crime."

Four men appeared at the same court earlier this month and were released on
bail. Calum Jones, 52, from Kilmacolm in Renfrewshire appeared alongside
three men from Lancashire: Robert Graham, John Doyle and Marshall Ronald.

Mr Jones resigned on Friday as a corporate partner with HBJ Gateley Wareing
following his arrest and the recovery of the Leonardo from the firm's
offices in West Regent Street, Glasgow.

The picture belonged to the Duke of Buccleuch, who died in September at the
age of 83. The picture had been in his family for two centuries and was
admired by thousands of visitors to the castle every year.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/