Seven works taken from the Kunsthal

At about three in the morning on 16 October 2012, an alarm sounded at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. The Kunsthal is an exhibition hall with no collection of its own. A security firm called the police, but the thieves had gone before officers arrived. Seven works were missing from the walls. AFP reports that the raid took about three minutes.

The works were on loan from the Triton Foundation, a private collection formed by Willem Cordia, a Rotterdam port businessman who died in 2011. They hung in “Avant-Gardes”, a show for the Kunsthal’s 20th anniversary. Police listed Picasso’s Tête d’Arlequin (1971), Matisse’s La Liseuse en blanc et jaune (1919), two views of London by Monet from 1901, Gauguin’s Femme devant une fenêtre ouverte (1888), a self-portrait by Meyer de Haan (about 1889 to 1891) and Lucian Freud’s Woman with Eyes Closed (2002). NU.nl says the De Haan was not Triton’s. Other outlets say the whole haul was.

The sources disagree on value. Romanian courts used the insured value, about 18.1 million euros. Experts at the time quoted far larger figures. None is a sale price.

Romanian police arrested Radu Dogaru and Eugen Darie in January 2013. AFP reports that they chose the Kunsthal by chance, after they searched for museums on a GPS. The BBC reports that Darie carried the works to Romania in pillowcases and that the gang failed to sell them. On 22 October 2013, Dogaru, Darie and a third man pleaded guilty. On 26 November 2013, a Bucharest court gave Dogaru and Darie 6 years 8 months each for aggravated theft and for taking part in an organised criminal group. On appeal, on 27 February 2014, the terms fell to 6 years for Dogaru and 5 years 4 months for Darie. Those sentences are final. Two more men were sentenced in July 2014.

Dogaru’s mother, Olga Dogaru, told investigators that she burned the works in her stove in February 2013, to protect her son. On 22 July 2013 she told a court, “I did not burn them.” Ash had been taken from her stove on 1 March 2013. Romania’s National History Museum said it came from at least three and at most four oil paintings on canvas. Its analysis did not test whether they were the stolen works. So the tests did not match the ash to these works. Olga Dogaru was sentenced to two years in July 2014, and the appeal upheld it in October 2014. The court sentenced her for helping her son and for firearms offences, not for burning the works. A separate case against her for destroying them was opened. The sources read give no verdict in it.

On 17 November 2018, Mira Feticu, a Dutch-Romanian novelist, and a Dutch journalist gave a painting to the Dutch embassy in Bucharest. She said an anonymous tip had led her to it. Romanian prosecutors said they were examining a work signed Picasso. Within days, the Antwerp theatre company BERLIN said it had buried a copy for a play. A Dutch expert counted at least 16 differences from the real work, judging from photos. Feticu is not accused of anything and says she was deceived. The sources read give no official finding on the object.

The seven works have not been recovered. The latest major-press statements read, from the BBC and The Guardian on 19 November 2018, say so. Defence lawyers told a court in 2013 that Triton had received nearly $24 million in insurance and given its ownership rights to a Lloyd’s underwriter.