[MSN] Organized crime likely behind Swiss art heist: expert

[MSN]

Organized crime likely behind Swiss art heist: expert
Last Updated: Friday, February 15, 2008 | 4:21 PM ET
CBC News

This week's spectacular theft of paintings worth $163 million US from a
Swiss museum was likely carried out by organized criminal gangs, says an
expert in art crime.

Noah Charney, founding director of the Rome-based Association for Research
into Crimes Against Art, said such crimes are carried out, not by thieves
who specialize in stealing art, but by ordinary thieves who are basically
nobodies.

"Against popular conception there is no such thing as a cliché or full-time
art thief," said Charney in an interview with CBC cultural affairs show Q on
Thursday.

"There are only thieves who have stolen art and sometimes more than once.
Sometimes organized crime syndicates will hire thieves who are low on the
totem pole to steal art."

A trio of armed and masked men ran into a small Zurich museum on Sunday half
an hour before the facility was set to close and threatened staffers.

They then grabbed four paintings by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Vincent van
Gogh and Claude Monet and ran out again.

"The thieves have no art training, no art handling experience. They've been
told the time and how to get in and what to take," he said.

"The ones who organize and orchestrate the crime — what to steal and how to
do so — are the most interesting figures and these are essentially criminal
administrators, part of the organized crime syndicate."

There is almost no way to prevent such thefts, said Charney, who began
researching art theft for his 2007 novel The Art Thief.

"Thefts are happening at opening hours," he said. "Museums and galleries
have set up elaborate alarm systems — and they worked, in this case and also
with the Munch heist [in Oslo in 2004]."

But the thieves grabbed the paintings and were out within three minutes,
which would beat even the quickest police response time.

They didn't choose the most valuable items, but just the ones easiest to
take as they were hanging in a cluster in a room close to the entrance,
Charney added.

Organized criminal gangs have been paying attention to the value of works of
art as auction prices climb, Charney said.

They can expect to get about seven to 10 per cent of the value of the works
on the black market, he said.

"This is a classic example of contemporary theft by organized crime
syndicates of works of art that will be used most probably for barter or
collateral on a closed black market for equivalent value of other illicit
goods like drugs or arms," Charney said.

The art could then languish in a mobster's living room or be abandoned
altogether, he said.

The chance of recovering the works — Cézanne's The Boy in Red Waistcoat,
Degas's Viscount Ludovic Lepic and His Daughter, Monet's Poppy Field Near
Vetheuil and Van Gogh's Blooming Chestnut Branches — depends on who stole it
and why.

"Was it the inspiration of a criminal trying to make a name for himself in
the criminal community or was it specifically organized by an organized
crime syndicate?" he said.

"If it's the former the objects will almost certainly be abandoned, and the
first step preceding that would probably be a ransom demand. If it's the
latter, the art could disappear for a generation."

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