Seventeen paintings taken from Verona's Castelvecchio

On the evening of 19 November 2015, just before closing time, three masked men with guns walked into the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona. The museum is run by the city and stands in a medieval castle. The BBC reports that the men overpowered the guard and a ticket-office employee. L’Arena, a Verona daily, reports that the employee was tied hand and foot and held at gunpoint. The men took 17 paintings and drove away in the guard’s car.

The works dated from the 1400s to the 1600s. The Italian culture ministry’s list includes Pisanello’s Madonna of the Quail, Jacopo Bellini’s Saint Jerome Penitent, Rubens’s Lady of the Lychnis flowers, Mantegna’s Holy Family with a Saint, and several works by Jacopo Tintoretto. Outlets gave different estimates of the value, from 10 million to 17 million euros. These are estimates, not sale prices. The paintings were never sold.

The raid had help from inside. A court found that the guard on duty, Francesco Silvestri, belonged to the gang. He knew that the control room would not react if the alarm was not set at once after closing. On 16 March 2016, police arrested suspects in Italy and Moldova. Outlets give different counts, 12 or 13.

On 6 May 2016, Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service found the paintings on an island in the Dniester river, in the Odesa region, close to the Moldovan border. They lay in plastic bags in the undergrowth. President Petro Poroshenko announced the find on 11 May and called it a “brilliant operation”, the BBC reports. Corriere del Veneto reports that Italian investigators said the works had been ordered for a Chechen collector. That claim was not proved in court, as far as the sources say. The paintings were handed to Italy in Kyiv on 21 December 2016 and flown to Verona the same day. The museum curator, Ettore Napione, said they had scratches but nothing very serious. The thieves had cut the canvases from their frames and thrown the frames away.

Italian courts convicted a number of people. On 5 December 2016, a Verona judge sentenced Francesco Silvestri to 10 years. His twin brother, Pasquale Silvestri Ricciardi, a former guard with links to the Moldovan side, received 10 years 8 months. The Venice Court of Appeal cut both sentences in 2017, and the Court of Cassation made them final on 8 November 2018. Sources differ on the final figure: six years, or six years and eight months.

Roman Tiganciuc, a Moldovan, was extradited from Ukraine to Italy in February 2017 and convicted on 13 September 2018 (6 years 4 months). On 22 June 2023, a Verona court convicted two Moldovans in their absence, Anatolie Burlac and Pavel Vasilachi, as alleged organisers (7 years each, first instance). A Ukrainian, Vitalii Voznyi, received two years, suspended, for receiving stolen goods. In December 2022, a court in Chisinau sentenced two Moldovan men to 12 and 13 years, Moldovan prosecutors say. They did not name the men. The sentences were open to appeal. No Ukrainian court outcome was found. Ukraine recovered the paintings and extradited Tiganciuc.

The works are back in the Castelvecchio Museum. CBS and AP reported that they were to be restored and reframed. The sources consulted do not say when that work ended.