(Adds quotes from Serb prosecutor, interior minister)
BELGRADE/ZURICH, April 12 (Reuters) – Police in Serbia have
recovered a painting by the French artist Paul Cezanne that was
stolen at gunpoint from a Swiss museum four years ago, officials
said on Thursday.
Cezanne’s Boy in a Red Waistcoat, which media said was worth
more than $100 million, was one of four paintings stolen from
the E. G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich in 2008 by a trio of
masked robbers who burst in just before closing time and told
staff to lie on the floor while they took what they wanted.
The heist was one of the largest in the world at the time.
Four men were arrested in the capital Belgrade and the
southwestern town of Cacak on Wednesday in connection with the
theft and the director of the Buehrle collection confirmed the
authenticity of the painting, the Zurich state prosecutor’s
office said.
At a press conference in Belgrade, Miljko Radisavljevic, the
special prosecutor for organised crime, said the suspects wanted
to sell the painting, found in the door panel of a car, for as
little as 3.5 million euros.
“They received 2.8 million euros before the arrest,” he
said.
Boy in a Red Waistcoat, thought to have been painted in
1888, depicts a boy in traditional Italian dress wearing a red
waistcoat, a blue handkerchief and a blue belt. Three other
versions of the painting are in museums in the United States.
Two of the stolen canvasses, one by Claude Monet and the
other by Vincent Van Gogh, were recovered not long after the
robbery, abandoned in a car. A work by Edgar Degas is still
missing.
At the same press conference, Serbian Interior Minister
Ivica Dacic said during the action dubbed Operation Waistcoat,
police also seized about 1.5 million euros in cash, four
vehicles, weapons and ammunition.
“I don’t think we have ever had a more valuable arrest,”
Dacic said. “The painting will now be guarded by police and
returned to its owner.”
The Buehrle collection, one of the most important
20th-century private holdings of European art, was amassed by
the industrialist Emil Georg Buehrle, who derived his wealth
from producing and selling anti-aircraft guns.
Last October, Serbian police recovered two paintings by
Pablo Picasso – Tete de Cheval (Horse’s Head) and Verre et
Pichet (Glass and Pitcher) – stolen in 2008 from a gallery in
the Swiss town of Pfaeffikon, near Zurich.
(Reporting By Aleksandar Vasovic; Additional reporting by Emma
Thomasson and Catherine Bosley in Zurich; Editing by Myra
MacDonald)
