The trove of paintings stolen from Verona’s Castelvecchio museum last year have been found by police in Ukraine, and will be returned to Verona soon. They were in the hands of a gang from Moldova which had apparently stolen them to order for a collector in Chechnya.
The paintings, including works by Tintoretto and Rubens are valued at around $16 million. Because they are so well-known that they would have been difficult to sell, authorities always believed that they were stolen to order for a wealthy person who wanted a ready-made collection.
The robbery took place in a carefully coordinated raid between the museum’s closing and the arming of its high-tech overnight security system. A guard and another employee were tied up. The guard is among the arrested; he is believed to have tipped off the rest of the gang to how to evade the alarms.
